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3. Positive training

This strategy is about providing opportunities for your dog to experience new or otherwise stressful things incrementally (stepwise), in a safe and supportive environment, with lots of praise for calm behaviour.

Put another way, the goal is to work with the adaptability of the system to gradually increase your dog’s capacity to cope with the ordinary stresses of life and with the occasional overwhelming ones as well.

It’s important to stay within the current limits of what’s tolerated, while gently nudging up against the boundaries to gradually expand them. (It's essentially the same principle as that used in sensible physical fitness training.)

As I mentioned on page 1, most of the dogs in this Finnish study were from working or show lines — two very different but both very demanding and stressful disciplines for dogs. This study didn’t examine the effects the humans (breeder, owner, trainer, handler) may have had on the dog’s early development, socialisation, and response to stimuli — i.e., on learned behaviour surrounding loud noises or strange people/situations. That wasn’t its purpose, so I don’t fault the researchers. It’s just that upbringing and experience matter — alot, as it turns out.

Two central themes are prevalent in the recent research on the highly sensitive person (HSP), or high sensory-processing sensitivity in people. The first is the “differential susceptibility” in HSPs compared with less sensitive people. Simply put, while HSPs may suffer more than less sensitive people in response to negative stimuli (whether physical or mental/emotional), they benefit to a much greater degree from positive stimuli.

That’s probably because HSPs process information more deeply than less sensitive people do, so positive stimuli have a greater calming and uplifting effect in HSPs. I wonder, too, whether they might also have a greater adaptive effect.

If the same is true in dogs, then even small improvements in the dog’s home environment, the strength and stability of social bonds, and the use of positive training that emphasises praise for good behaviour (rather than punishment for bad behaviour) are likely to yield much better results in highly sensitive dogs than in less sensitive dogs.

In other words, there’s a bigger payoff for every positive change you can make to your dog’s environment and daily experience. Now, that’s worth celebrating!

The second theme of the HSP research is how important the parent’s, and particularly the mother’s, influence is on the highly sensitive child, for bad and for good. I don’t subscribe to the practice of infantilising dogs by using such terms as “pet parents” for their owners (legal term) or guardians (better but still not great). However, I think we can draw a parallel here:

Because we are socially bonded with our dogs and they are reliant on us for their physical needs and psychological well-being, how we behave around and especially toward our dogs — particularly how we react when our dog reacts — makes a huge difference to how intensely our dogs react to negative stimuli, whether that be loud noises, strange people or situations, or any other specific trigger your highly sensitive dog may have.

For example, I became highly reactive when I first realised that my dog (adopted as a stray at 12–18 months of age) was dog-aggressive in certain situations. I never did figure out why she was fine with some dogs but not others, so I became very nervous and reactive about any and all encounters with dogs we didn’t know. Some went well, others didn’t, but in every case my anticipation of trouble didn’t help matters, and my reactiveness only served to amplify the problem in the moment and make such problems more likely in the future.

In one important study of HSPs, mindfulness — the simple practice of keeping your attention on the present moment — significantly reduced anxiety in HSPs. It certainly works for me in my personal life. In my professional life, I think I accidentally bumbled into adopting this approach when working with nervous horses. If there’s one species that’ll give you instant feedback on your own state of mind, it’s the horse! So, I can attest to the usefulness of this simple practice with horses, donkeys, dogs, cats, goats, chickens (‘chooks’) — you name it.

I'm speaking to myself as well here when I say that the way to help your highly sensitive dog remain or become more calm is to focus on the present yourself. Calm yourself if needed, then talk calmly and positively to your dog, and encourage and reward calm behaviour.

Remember how much more responsive HSPs are to positive stimuli, and become a positive stimulus for your dog by using lots of praise for calm behaviour. Be consistent, and over time your dog will become less reactive.

In short, consistently praise calm behaviour, gently discourage reactive behaviour (e.g., barking or growling unnecessarily) — and while we’re at it, avoid using food as a reward! Food is food, and praise is praise; your dog doesn’t confuse the two, and neither should you.

4. Diet matters!

As goes the gut, so goes the brain. A disordered gut immediately affects mood and sensitivity (e.g., irritable bowel, irritable person), so pay particular attention to diet in your highly sensitive dog. This topic deserves its own post — a whole book, in fact — so I’ll just cover the most essential aspects here.

In particular, cut way down or cut out all starchy foods, especially grains and potatoes. The most common grains used in pet food are wheat, corn, oats, barley, and rice. They may appear on the label or in the food itself as whole grains or as flour/meal. All of these grains are high in starch, and all should be limited or cut out completely because fermentation of starch by the dog’s gut microbes can create a "leaky gut" that leads to chronic inflammation and irritability.

Also limit the amounts of sweet potatoes and legumes (peas and beans, including soy). Although they’re not as starchy as grains and potatoes, they do contain quite a bit of starch, and legumes contain some other components that can adversely affect gut health.

While it may be difficult at first, base the dog’s diet on a wide variety of meats and veggies (avoiding the starchy ones). These days, there are some very good fresh-frozen raw dog foods available in grocery stores, so they’re a good place to start.

My favourite commercial frozen raw-food diet for Australian dogs is Big Dog.

If you're inclined to be making your dog's food yourself, please consider Feeding Miss Lilly, revised edition, the book I wrote on how I fed my own dog.

In the short-term, avoid any foods you know from experience cause flareups of digestive, skin, anal sac, or ear problems in your dog. In time, on a healthier diet, you may be able to feed these items occasionally without problems, but until your dog is on an even keel, it’s generally best to avoid them.

Also avoid highly processed foods (which includes kibbles and canned foods), other than as the occasional naughty treat or for emergencies (e.g., keep a can of dog food in the cupboard for whenever you run out of good food). Foods containing synthetic food colouring and flavour enhancers such as MSG (monosodium glutamate) are also best avoided, as they too can cause irritability.

Lastly, for now, give the gut microbes several days to adapt before deciding that a dietary change isn’t working or before changing anything else in your dog’s diet. Respect the gut microbes, or pay the price (which ain’t pretty!).

Read on...

© Christine M. King, 2019, 2022. All rights reserved.

First published on WordPress, 03 Feb 2019.

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