Clean Run - June 2011 - 19

Casey has added vocalizing, panting, pacing, and quivering to his repertoire in the car. Where he used to completely void his bladder before getting in, he now races to the back of the yard, lifts his leg and races back to get in as fast as he can. Around the house, Casey is hyper-vigilant to any signal from Mary that she might be getting ready to leave and once he even tried to get into the car when she was going to work. Through the day, Casey plays games in the house that are starting to affect Mary’s otherwise quiet life: Mary’s neighbors informed her that Casey barks for long periods of time when she is away and seems to be moving around the house a lot when she is gone. On course, Casey is in a such a hurry to move that he has begun breaking startlines, knocking bars, popping out of the weaves early, barking and going off course. Mary has had to learn to handle with great care because Casey has become so sensitive to her behavior that if she so much as shifts her weight in the wrong direction, Casey goes off course.

A certain amount of stress improves life; it is the positive kind of anticipation that makes life exciting and interesting. This stress, known as eustress, is not often seen as a problem, but if you follow what can happen with teams like Mary and Casey, you can see that stress doesn’t have to be bad to create problems. Casey has now become so enamored of the sport that his excitement has bled into other parts of his life. The acute eustress that he experienced on the agility field became the bigger part of the game for Casey, anticipating agility now takes up more energy than running the course. Enjoying the rush of running a course was predicted by getting out of the car. Getting out of the car was predicted by driving toward the field. Driving toward the field became a predictor of getting out of the car. Getting in the car became the predictor of driving to the field. Here we see a naturally occurring backchain of events, where the dog learns the rewarding event is predicted by a regular stream of events that inevitably lead to the conclusive reward. For Casey, his eustress went from being acute on the

course to being chronic in his whole life. The only time we don’t see Casey’s excitement is on Friday afternoons when Mary loads the car for the next day’s trial, and then she and Casey go for a long walk together in the forest behind her house. Loading the car is a signal to Casey that they are not going to agility, they are going to have an off-leash romp in the woods. The kind of stress we think of more often is distress. Distress is the kind of stress that we experience when we anticipate bad things happening. It is uncomfortable and does things to us that are not good for our bodies. Eustress is the kind of stress we experience when we anticipate something wonderful and exciting is coming. Although eustress sounds like fun, in other cases, it can take such a large role in life that it becomes distress. Stress begins when an animal notices a change in the environment telling him that something exciting or dangerous is going to happen. When a dog is chronically stressed, he is always on alert for the smallest sign of the stimulus that

Clear Mind
A Goal Setting Workbook for Agility Handlers
Ideas for Instructors Activities Easy to follow examples

Take your handling to the next level
$19.95 Copyright 2011

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June 11 | Clean Run

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Clean Run - June 2011

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