Reactivity Unpacked - Mini Series

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence.

Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like I think people see them on Instagram. Doing these incredible things. Yeah, go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done?

And Max O'Neill, you would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I'd go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shed a tear. Okay, it's friendly. My name's Jack Lawrence, of course. Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. This episode brought to you by the legends at Knowse, a multi-award-winning Australian pet insurance company. That's knose.com.au for more information, issued by Pacific International Insurance. Max, today we're sort of going to kick off. We have spoken about reactivity in the past, but today we kind of want to kick off like this little mini series because reactivity is basically, would you say, the biggest topic when it comes to our dogs. Most people, the issues that they face is with some form of reactivity.

Yeah, it's a really, really, really common issue for a number of reasons. Number one, where we are in Australia is a very highly populated and very dense area, the Gold Coast. Number two, a lot of working breeds. You know, when we confine them on the leash, expose them to a lot of dogs, it can lead to a lot of stuff. And number 3, you know, unfortunately people have had a lot of bad socialisation experiences, whether that's not getting their dog out soon enough or whether that's our dog, you know, having a negative experience with another dog. So either way, a lot of roads lead to Rome and a lot of dogs end up reactive. So it's something that I personally specialise in and I find really rewarding to work with. And, but also find, knowing what I know, a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of reels I see, YouTube videos, or seeing clients have seen another trainer. I go, what? Why are you doing that? Or where'd you hear that? And, uh, there's a lot of crappy information on the internet, so we want to try and disseminate some good helpful information, um, all for free so that you guys are armed with the best possible knowledge. And, uh, you know, when you're going into your training session, whether that's on your own or with another trainer, you're armed with the right knowledge so you can know what to do in certain situations. So we're going to do a little mini series on various topics that I find pretty helpful with reactivity, and we're going to start today with something called trigger stacking.

As we said, this is a complicated topic and very in-depth. So if people obviously can get some tips from what we're going to be talking about over the next few episodes, but if they need more detailed help and advice, you've obviously recently released your Reactivity Rewire program.

Yeah, spot on. Thanks for the plug.

No worries at all. I'll send you an invoice later.

Yeah. Sponsored by. So yeah, we've launched our Reactivity Rewire program. It's not just available to people on the Gold Coast. We've got clients in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, And it looks like we've got our first client coming aboard from New Zealand shortly, which is cool. Oh, choice, bro. So the way the program works—

I just spent a week in New Zealand, so I'm basically— Jack's brought back the lingo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a Kiwi.

He was doing a haka today when I came in. Oh, I was. Yeah, it's wherever you're located, you can jump aboard the program and we're getting pretty amazing results. So if you need some extra help, let us know. I'm a good guy to have in your corner. But let's kick off trigger stacking.

If you don't say so yourself.

If I don't say so myself. Have you heard of trigger stacking before, Jack?

I haven't. I wouldn't know. I tell a lie. I have heard of it because you just told me before we hit record what we're talking about. But other than that, I've got no idea what trigger stacking means. I'm assuming you take some triggers and you stack

them. Yeah. So clearly, clearly well-versed. So trigger stacking is whatever your dog's trigger is, whether that's— let's, let's, we'll stick in reactivity terms today. So whether that's, you know, cars, people, or other dogs as an example. And it's when one exposure to that trigger alone may not get the dog to their, what we call their boiling point, or that, you know, cross them over threshold where they're now reacting. But each individual experience stacks up to eventually where dogs have a bit of a tipping point. Okay. And we, you'll, a lot of reactive dog owners will see a lot of this and can find it quite confusing until we understand this topic, which is why I wanted to start with it. So when we're doing our reactivity consults, what I hear a lot Is people say, oh, there's no pattern with his reactivity. You know, he, but you know, he will bark at any dog. But what's really weird is we might go for a walk. He might ignore 1 dog, 2 dogs, 3 dogs. And then the 4th dog is this little old Labrador minding its business. And then Fred will just lose his shit and bark at this dog. And we can't figure out what it is about that dog that is so wrong. And that's trigger stacking in action. It's not that specific dog.

It's just this building up and building up and building up.

It's building. It's the straw that broke the camel's back. And I like to think of it as like, imagine working at a cafe and you have one customer come in who's really rude when they order. Cool. Second customer comes in, complains about their coffee. Cool. Third customer comes in, they're really impatient and they're, you know, take it, whatever else. And then the fourth one, they might not be that bad, but by then you've had a crappy morning. You haven't gone on break yet. And then you're pretty rude back to them and you have it and you snap a bit. That's trigger stacking. Okay, that feeling of just building up, building up, building up, and no rest from these exposures— that's a trigger stacking concept that can explain a lot of why you guys might not see a direct pattern with your dog, because it's really, really random. And what's important to understand is each trigger will add a different amount. Like, if your dog passes 3 or 4 dogs that are all kicking off, that might add a lot more heat and a lot more You know, stress to the system than one dog minding its business. So again, if we think of them reaching that 100-degree boiling point, some dogs might take 6 or 7 dogs before they get to their, like, simmering. And then some dogs might take, you know, only 1 or 2 before they're boiling. It's, uh, really, you know, important to understand. And that's one of the first things we do in our assessments is kind of figure out what our dog's stress tolerance is, and then looking to make them being able to tolerate more and more and more. Before they lose their shit, basically.

Yeah. It's interesting because it sort of reminds me, obviously we've spoken in the past about a previous dog that I had with major issues with him. And it reminds me of that because we would go out and have no incidents and everything would be fine. I'm like, and I'd be like, oh, okay, great. It was, that was perfect. We go out the next time, nothing again. I'm like, oh, he's cured. Third time we go out, bang, something happens. I'm like, what is going on with you? You were fine, you know, on this occasion and that occasion. And then all of a sudden you've gone mental and you're attacking this dog.

Yeah. Where does it come from? And, and what Jack's alluded to there is a really, really good example of, and what the next point we're going to be is micro and macro trigger stacking.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

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So micro trigger stacking is when we look at it across, say, one walk or one outing, right? So where we see one dog, two dog, three dog, fourth dog's where our dog snaps. Whereas sometimes people can see it on a grander scale, which is what Jack said, you know, day one, nothing. Day two, nothing. Day three, Is when it happens. So that's what we call like macro, or what I refer to as macro trigger stacking, where same thing, it might not be in the space of a walk, it might take a lot longer, but that's, you know, can happen that way. And that can also be confusing to clients. We're like, I just don't get it, start of the week is great, it's like he hates Wednesdays. And it's like, well, no, because your week is quite cyclical. He has, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, he's walked on lead. By Friday, he's just over it and he's pissed off. But then Saturday, Sunday, we let him off at the beach. He blows off all that steam and it resets the sequence. Um, and that's a really, really, really common part too. And that's a big reason why, you know, when clients come to me and we, we structure their homework and we coach them through it is we say, hey, your exposure sessions should be like 3 days a week maximum, in my opinion. Okay. Even if we go out and do an exposure session where a dog doesn't have a single reaction, that's still a lot for the client, but also a lot for the dog. And what we don't want is for the dog to start to go, oh, we're going out to see dogs again. Oh shit. And start to get really burned out and fatigued from that. Same with us. If we were working at a job and every single day we're having really negative interactions with customers, that's going to start to weigh on us. We're going to start to hate it. We're going to get burned out. And it's very real for our dog too. I know we always say don't humanise them, but their emotions and thought patterns are much more complex than we give them credit for.

So if someone's listening to this and they go, this really sounds like my dog, like, you know, we have that. We have that situation where I'm going past 1 or 2 or 3 dogs and then all of a sudden he'll go off and it's just so random. I can't, I can't work it out, you know, blah, blah, blah. What would be the first step into trying to combat?

Yeah, cool. So we typically say is give your dog some decompression time before that happens. So let's look at it on a micro scale on like a walk-to-walk basis. So let's say we go out and we go, okay, like I know my dog's going to blow up in them at some point throughout the walk. We want to try and spot A couple of things. One, like, although our dogs can't count, roughly how many encounters can they have before they start to lose it? And what are those body language cues our dogs start to show us before it happens? For example, if we kind of replay back in our mind, we might go, okay, he blew up at dog number 5, but I noticed even with dog number 4, he started to look a bit more stiff, or he's giving a bit more side eye, or whatever. When we start to notice that, that's where we want to break away and go, okay. How can we give our dog zero exposure to triggers for the next 5 minutes, maybe even 10 minutes, depends how long we see, until the dog we feel like returns to base and they're calm again. And when we talk decompression time, that might be doing something fun. Like some dogs love to move, you know, so some dogs when we got them, we break off and go, let's throw some food around, get him zipping left and right. Maybe we play tug and let him like shake it out and be like aggressive like that, like a bit of a punching bag for them. And some dogs really just want to lay and be still and do nothing.

Mm-hmm.

Find what works for your dog. Is it something fun? Is it something, you know, like Kind of aggressive, like tug, or is it just being still? But either way, we want to do one of those 3 things, whatever you think works best for your dog, whatever you observe works best for your dog. And we want to do that well away from triggers. Again, imagine you work at a cafe and your boss goes, hey, go on break, you've had a really shitty morning. Some people want to go and do breathwork for 5 minutes. Some people want to go listen to a podcast. Some people might want to go play on their phone. Some people might want to have a smoke. Some people might want to punch a wall. All our dogs are the same. Whatever helps bring us down and reset our nervous system, that's what you've got to do with your dog.

So say I've got Kira, she's reactive to dogs and it's a bit random anyway. We're going out for a walk. We go past one. Oh, that was success. No reaction there. Went past, no reaction there. Is that when I go, okay, now we're going to step away because we've done 2 successful with no reactions. We're going to go play something. We're going to do, we're going to whatever it is, as you said, whatever they enjoy. Then we're going to go back onto our walk.

Spot on.

Another dog, no reaction. Great. Maybe go another dog, no reaction. Okay, let's go break again.

Yeah.

So that we're just not getting to the point where the dog is exploding.

Spot on. We're not letting them rehearse that behaviour. And we're also creating that expectation, like, or removing that expectation. Sorry. So if our dogs know in advance, at some point I'm going to lose my shit at a dog, even though it's them losing it at the dog, they still go, oh, I'm going to be put in a situation that I find stressful enough that I have to shout. And for example, like imagine how we would feel. Imagine going to work going, hey, you've got to fire someone today, even though it's you that's on the giving end, not receiving end. Just knowing we're going to have that tough conflicting moment would weigh heavily on us, right?

Yeah.

Um, and our dogs can feel that way too. So we go, hey, look, it's all good. Like before things get to that point where you feel the need to lash out, all good, we'll divert, I'll manage you properly, we'll go do something. And even our dogs knowing and expecting that can help them from trigger stacking so much. And then on a macro scale, like Jack said with his last dog, you know, if your dog is prone to a blowup every few days or so, is break up your week a bit. I always say I walk Nelson. Nelson's not remotely reactive. In fact, the opposite. But I walk Nelson 3 days a week because it's kind of the least, you know, return on investment thing. He finds it boring confining him to a leash, trotting around the block.

I don't even take Kira for a walk. It drives me mental. She hates it. She drags. She loves running. Yeah, right. Unless you'll sprint like a lunatic. I go for a run, I'm like, I want to run with my dog. Let's go for a run. Nah, just drags. He's like, I don't want to do this, dude. This is boring. I want to chase shit. I want to do stuff.

Yeah, there you go. And so it's, you know, like particularly with Nelson, because he helped me rehabilitate reactive dogs all day. So all day Nelson gets barked at, shouted at, teeth shown to him. And that's part of the reason I got a Rottweiler is because he's so stable and so strong of character that that doesn't affect him. He doesn't go at night. You know, a lot of dogs would have had his experience and be reactive by now, but he's why I love him. He's so good. But if I know he's had a really tough day, I go, hey, let's go burn this off. Because if I don't, he would eventually trigger to the point where he would tell a dog, hey, beat it. Like, I'm done with this. I've done this all week.

Yeah. And when he snaps.

Yeah. And that's—

yeah, we got problems.

We got a problem. And that's part of being a good dog parent too, is like understanding this and how much your dog can handle. And there's that buzzword Advocating for them and just being a good pet parent in general. That's trigger stacking. All

right, fantastic. Well, of course, this is going to be an ongoing little series in regards to that. So if you're sitting there going, well, my dog doesn't do that, it just barks at every single thing we walk past, don't panic. We will get to these bits and pieces as we get through the reactivity segment. If you've got any questions about trigger stacking or anything at all, of course, as always, The Dog People Podcast on Facebook and Instagram. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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