Clean Run - September 2017 - 15

Worked Up!

A Closer Look at Arousal
and Adrenaline in
Agility Dogs, Part 1
By Sarah Stremming

ou've seen it, or you've been
there. If you've been in the sport
for any length of time; you've
likely both seen it and experienced it.
It goes like this: young dog starts out
with excellent skill and speed-he nails
his stopped contacts, he doesn't miss
weave poles, and his start-line stays are
rock-solid. But somewhere along the
line things start to slip. His start lines
get pushier, his contacts morph into a
quick-release (or is that a self-release?),
and his weave poles become less and
less reliable. Any mistake or reset on
course warrants a spinning, barking,
spitting argument; and the more he
seems to really love this game the more
his handler dreads it. She wonders
when her promising young dog turned
into this wild-eyed monster.
Over-aroused, over-adrenalized, or just
plain over-the-top, there are a lot of
dogs in our sport that just can't seem
to hold themselves together. They spin,
they bark, they bite; they can't hold a
stay and sometimes they seem to have
forgotten all of their skills. Ringside
their pupils are dilated, they beat themselves with toys, and they may vocalize
in a strained, desperate way. Your dog
may meet all or some of these descriptions; in any case, it is smart for us as
September 17 | Clean Run

© CLEAN RUN

competitors and trainers to recognize
and respond to the emotional states of
our canine partners. Through training
practices, selective breeding, and the
intensity of the agility environment we
have created an emotional hurricane
for our dogs in many ways. A hurricane
need not be a devastating event; but it
takes solid foundation and good planning to survive.
First, it's important to know what we're
talking about. Arousal is defined loosely
as "readiness" while adrenaline is simply
a common term for the stress hormone
epinephrine (the "fight or flight" hormone), and anxiety is a feeling of dread
or impending doom in the body. When
we look at it this way it's easy to see that
these are different things, and yet the
terms get tossed around and combined
in our agility vernacular. When it comes
to our agility dogs arousal is necessary,
adrenaline is inevitable, and anxiety is
never a good thing. We need our dogs
to achieve an optimal arousal state for
the task at hand. The adrenaline rush
they are likely to feel when running
can make that state tough to achieve,
and anxiety will make it impossible to
achieve. For the purposes of this article
we will be talking about dogs whose
highly adrenalized state makes it diffi-

cult for them to achieve optimal arousal
for agility. These are the dogs whose on
course behaviors have deteriorated and
who respond to resets or mistakes with
big displays.
In the case of the young dog described
above, common issues rooted in
adrenaline popped up after a conditioned emotional response (CER) to
the ring occurred. Over the course of a
few trials the dog developed a strong
CER to the ring (ring=adrenaline rush)
and his highly reinforced behaviors
began to deteriorate not only due to
emotions but due to the subsequent
reinforcement scenario that evolves
inside the ring, where our classic reinforcers (treats and toys) do not exist.
Unwilling to stop trialing, his handler
just continued to reinforce these behaviors in training, believing that this
history of reinforcement would transfer
as it initially appeared to. She meant to
fix her problems but intensified them
by solidifying the clear difference between the ring and the training field in
the dog's mind. Now what started as
a problem of emotions has become a
problem of training as well. In essence,
when we allow this to happen, we have
two problems to fix-not just one.

15



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - September 2017

Contents
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover1
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover2
Clean Run - September 2017 - Contents
Clean Run - September 2017 - 4
Clean Run - September 2017 - 5
Clean Run - September 2017 - 6
Clean Run - September 2017 - 7
Clean Run - September 2017 - 8
Clean Run - September 2017 - 9
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Clean Run - September 2017 - 66
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover3
Clean Run - September 2017 - Cover4
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