Clean Run - September 2019 - 28

Mental Resilience
In Dog Agility
By Bobbie Bhambree

There have been a lot of stressors in my
life these past few years, and a lot of
changes, so lately I have been thinking
about mental resilience. I looked up the
definition and this is what I found:
"Mental resilience can be seen as a trait
that enables an individual to recover
from stress and to face the next stressor
with optimism."
Essentially, mental resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficult or even
traumatic life events. There is a lot of
research in human psychology about
how to build mental resilience, why
some people cope well with adversity
while others fall apart, and how genetics and the environment can influence a
person's ability to be resilient.
Mental toughness is like a muscle. It
needs to be worked to grow and develop. If you haven't pushed yourself
in thousands of small ways, you'll wilt
when things get difficult. You can't
think your way to mental toughness.
Mental toughness is built through small
wins-the individual choices that we
make on a daily basis and the actions we
take. When I run for another 10 minutes
instead of quitting at 20 minutes when
my brain starts arguing with itself, that's
building mental toughness. When I get
up early in the morning to go to the
gym instead of hitting the snooze button
for another 30 minutes, that's building
mental toughness.
You might be wondering "why talk
about mental resilience in the world
of dog agility?" Competing in agility
requires more of a dog than just trained
skills. The more resilient dogs are, the
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more balanced, confident, and happy
they will be. The easier they will adapt
to different environments, embrace new
experiences, cope with stress, maintain
focus and self-control, handle environmental stimuli without becoming overwhelmed, etc.
Dogs that lack mental resilience can
have difficulty performing agility in certain contexts because there are stressors
that cause them to be anxious or fearful
or even shut down. They may lack the
bandwidth to focus or practice as long
as you'd like or to recover from making
mistakes in training.
During my many years working in animal welfare, I have witnessed example
after example of animals bouncing
back after traumatic events and stressful periods in their lives. I have worked
with many puppy mill rescues-some of
which were considered adoptable within
days of being rescued while others had
to be worked with by the behavior department for weeks or even months. My
own dog, Marvel, is another example of
mental resilience. I have written about
him a lot in blogs and articles-Marvel
has taught me a lot about working and
living with aggression, anxiety, and
arousal and how to work through those
problems to be able to play agility.

What Factors Determine a Dog's
Resilience?
Studies show that genetics play a significant part. Any dog trainer can share
anecdotes of cases they've worked where
the dog's history was one of neglect or
abuse, and the dog's temperament is
lovely. My friend and colleague adopted

a Pit Bull that was rescued from a dog
fighting bust. His name is Theodore. As
soon as he was weaned from his mother,
he was put on a chain with only 20 feet
to roam. He could not access the other
dogs or puppies around him. At seven
months, the ASPCA rescued him, along
with many other dogs that were part of
this particular dog fighting ring. Theo
then spent seven or eight months in a
temporary shelter-a converted warehouse-with three hundred other barking, stressed, and restless dogs. Theo
lived in a kennel and did not have access
to the outdoors or the other dogs. Yet
today, Theo is the sweetest, most welladapted dog I have ever met. And this
is not because his momma is a brilliant
dog trainer (although she is); it's Theo's
genetics that gave him the ability to be
resilient to this level.
There is also a significant amount of
evidence that early life experiences can
create a dog that is mentally resilient and
copes well with a stressful event or a dog
that falls apart because of the event. This
is why dog trainers stress the importance
of early socialization in puppies rather
than waiting for the puppy to be full vaccinated before taking him out into the
world. Science tells us that exposing the
puppy to different situations, people, other animals, and experiences in safe and
controlled ways significantly improves
the puppy's ability to bounce back from
potentially scary or traumatic events.
I have a client named Greta that I have
been working with on and off for nearly
three years. There is a long back story,
but the CliffsNotes version is that she
is a fearful dog and struggled to even
Clean Run | September 19

Clean Run - September 2019

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