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WEEK 1 INTRODUCTION

THE BRAIN AND CONCEPTS 101Welcome to Geek!

How exciting! You have made an amazing decision! Our Geek programme is a special and unique place. We know Geek will allow you to not only deliver the information you learn to others but to understand it for your dogs. Geek is a truly exciting opportunity. Well done, you!

Over the next ten weeks, we are going to look at how to tackle specific struggles. Foundational to tackling such struggles – whether that’s chase or dog-dog interaction - is a deep knowledge and understanding of how to get real-life results. It is from that foundation that we get true transformation.

That knowledge and understanding, which leads to real-life transformation, is going to be what drives the success of your own dog business, your own dog relationship at home or your own household dynamics. That is where the real magic happens!

Throughout your Pro Dog Trainer experience, the focus has been on how dogs learn and on concepts. We are now going to flip that on its head and take a struggle-focused approach in which we tackle issues such as chase,

separation anxiety and resource guarding. These are the struggles people are typically going to come to you for help with, but equally, if you’re doing this so that you can be the best possible teacher for your dog, these are the areas we know that you will want to cover.

Now, a little warning. There is going to be some geeky stuff!

If you are here in the Geek programme, then you’re probably pretty geeky yourself! The most valuable thing to know is that whenever we dive into the very geeky, lofty teaching, we will constantly balance that up with a real-life application for seeing those real-life results. People are enticed and obsessed by the big, lofty concepts. This perspective is a stumbling block that we often see. There is no link back to achieving true transformation. There are so many courses where you can spend years learning those lofty concepts but cannot still practically apply or deliver that learning.

That’s where Geek is different! There is a balance between academic learning and real-life results.

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Running one of the biggest centres in the UK, we see this all too often; people who have all of the qualifications, all the gear, but no idea. Perhaps they have paid thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands to try and learn but still have no ability to practically apply that knowledge to struggles and deliver real-life results, whether that is for their own dogs or their students’ dogs.

There is a lot of information out there! You could look into the behaviour understanding of mice, rats, dogs, cats, humans, dolphins and any other species you choose. It’s all there in the world to discover. However, when you do, it can seem overwhelming. More to the point, much modern research relies on funding, and the funds go to research that will create a big headline. What that means is that most research out there, especially research into dogs and dog behaviour, is headline-grabbing research that is problem-based rather than solutions based. You can spend 20 - 40 years immersing yourself in research to figure out a way forward. That can be quite a pessimistic place to be. You will find yourself surrounded by problems.

The choice is yours. You can do it the hard way, or we can take care of it for you, cut to the chase, and get those real-life results! We can turn that lofty research and information about brains and hormones and make it insanely practical. Not only that, we will make it more deliverable, bite-sized, and easily achievable. That’s our goal. It is something that we know we can deliver for you and that you can, in turn, learn this information for your students’ dogs,

So, how are the next 10 weeks going to look?

A set of lessons will release at the start of each week. You can choose to tackle a video each day. You can also work through them all at once, depending on how geeky you’re feeling!

Each week has a theme. We’re going to keep it exciting and not give the topics away in advance! But to give you a teaser, this first week focuses on the brain. There will be a dog-dog interaction week because we know that’s an area that contains a lot of struggles for people. Perhaps that’s one of your struggles. Then there might be a transformation week or a week focusing on health, disease, and hormones!

OK, we’re giving too much away!

Just prepare to be excited!

We believe this programme is unique as it allows you to cut out 40 years of immersing yourself in a very problem-based world. Instead, this course gives you solutions and real-life results. Geek arms you with a way to communicate these ideas effectively, which will be practical in your day-to-day life, whether for your dog or other people’s dogs.

Here’s to the next 10 weeks of exciting learning and geeking out!

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your clients’ dogs, neighbours, friends, or just your happy household. It’s something that we find very exciting!

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WEEK 1 LESSON 1:

STRESS RESPONSE 101Welcome to Brain Week!

Brain Week is Tom’s favourite thing ever!

It is also an important week because we have to take all the brain science and acknowledge that it is often problem-based, not solution-focused. Let’s be honest. Much of brain science is also not very tangible or reachable. It exists in the lofty sense but is not very understandable or achievable for most people.

What is needed instead is real-life order, which in turn will get you real-life results.

So, we need to start with a little bit of physiology…

You may have studied biology or physiology at school or college or university, or you may never have studied either to any level. Either way, it does not matter. You are about to learn them in a very different way. You’re going to get excited about the new learning, too!

This learning is a brand new start, so whether you’ve done as much geeking out as Tom, or

you’ve never done any geeky stuff, this learning is the very beginning for you. We are all starting together on a level playing field.

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The very first thing to understand is that stress serves a role. Its purpose is to keep us alive.

Stress has many negative connotations in our modern-day world, so we often joke that rather than saying “stress”, we should say “stretch” as a much more appropriate way of understanding its value. Let’s put that into context. You might have a busy week where the world is throwing a lot at you. You could say, “I’m stressed. I’m stressed. I’m stressed.” or you could choose to say, “I am being stretched right now. At the end of this stretch period, I’m going to feel like I have so much more capacity because the world can’t keep throwing things at me, and if it does, I’m just going to keep stretching!”

Does framing it this way feel different? Growth is that difference.

Stress serves a purpose in us as humans. Stress also serves a purpose in animals.

There are some species of exotic birds that need to experience certain levels of stress when living in captivity to avoid becoming sick. Zoos put silhouettes of predators in the sky and on the walls so that these birds have the opportunity to be startled.

Without stress, you wouldn’t have a pulse! If the environment isn’t stressful enough, your brain and your body do strange things and you can become sick.

When we understand this, we can stop looking at stress as something negative. Instead, see stress as something productive. It’s stretch!

So, let’s get a little geeky and take a look at the hormone cortisol, which is involved in stress. How is cortisol produced? What does it do?

We will put all of this into the context of concept training shortly, but let’s start with the physiology aspect.

We’re sure you’ve heard it before, but just to be sure… every dog has a brain!

As our dogs go through life, the world is constantly throwing events at them. Perhaps that’s someone knocking at the door, a visitor coming into the house, another dog barking and lunging on a walk, or a cat appearing out of nowhere. These events could be positive or negative.

Stress 101

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Information about these events is received by the brain and triggers the hypothalamus to produce a corticotropin-releasing factor. In turn, that acts on the anterior pituitary gland, which secretes something called ACTH.

ACTH travels to the adrenal glands via the bloodstream. The adrenal glands, which sit just above your dog’s kidneys, are made up of two areas: a central core and an outer shell. Cortisol is produced in the outer shell of the adrenal gland.

So, in basic physiology terms, ACTH stimulates the outer shell of the adrenal gland, which in turn produces cortisol from the adrenal glands. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you are already very familiar with cortisol and how it works because you are already familiar with the analogy of the bucket.

Are you relieved? Does that make all the physiology more tangible? That’s our aim throughout Geek, because as soon as you allow it to be tangible, you are going to be able to help your students, and you’re going to be able to help yourself.

Being able to ground the science in this way is what so many people and so many courses are unable to do. So here’s your first lightbulb moment! This is where you start to go “Ah! It makes sense!”

When you communicate this to clients, you are not going to say, “The brain perceives a strongly negative event and in turn, this triggers the hypothalamus to produce a corticotropin-releasing factor…” and continue to walk them through the whole physiological explanation!

Instead, you are going to talk in terms that you’re already really familiar with. How would that look? You would start by simply explaining,

“Positive and negative events pay into your dog’s bucket.”

When you present it that way, your students are going to feel absolute confidence in you, which is massively important. You’re going to feel confident in your knowledge and understanding. Presented this way, it is very graspable. So, what is this cortisol in the body actually doing?

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The stress response…

Let’s imagine Tom is a predator and Lauren is the prey!

Lauren is scared and wants to get away (we know, we would too!). Stress is applied, and Lauren’s body needs to adapt by downregulating all non-essential processes. What does that mean? As cortisol increases (the bucket fills), Lauren will not worry about digesting her breakfast – or about food at all! Her cardiac output - her heart rate and the amount that her heart muscle contracts – will increase. Her blood pressure will increase. This may all sound familiar. When you’re stressed or stretched, you are more than likely familiar with experiencing increased blood pressure, a racing heart, and being in a state of heightened awareness and alertness. All your senses are sharpened.

We often talk about this as if it were a bad thing. Remember, these are good hormones. Stress keeps us alive. The important thing is managing and manipulating these hormones effectively, which is exactly what we’re going to show you!

Insulin and glucose…

Cortisol also has an impact on the body’s insulin. Insulin causes your body to bring glucose, or blood sugar, into the cells of your body and store it.

Cortisol makes the cells of the body resistant to insulin so that the blood sugar is higher and is stored, ready to be used as needed.

Cortisol also increases glucose. This is especially true in animals, and particularly so in cats.

What does this mean practically? What do you need to be aware of when working with dogs?Very often, cortisol will be causing all these processes to happen in the body long before the bucket overflows and you see the behavioural response.

The immune system

Another non-essential process to be aware of is your dog’s immune system. The immune system becomes down-regulated whenever your dog’s bucket is filling or is full. This is especially true when the bucket is chronically full over a long period.

A good example of this would be a female dog who has recently had puppies. Her immunity drops because there is an increase in cortisol as well as an increase in progesterone.

If you choose to read around this subject and check out any of those problem-based papers, you will find they all talk about this as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. That means it involves the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands.

It is rare to get a blood sample from a cat that doesn’t show elevated blood glucose. Even a cat who appears to be totally at ease with the vet, purring away while happily being stroked, will show high blood sugar when the blood sample is run through the machine. This indicates elevated cortisol.

GEEKY FACT:GEEKY FACT:

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Each dog is an individual

So, this axis is at work in every dog. However, what is interesting is that there is variation in that stress response from one dog to another.

Taking Tom and Lauren as an example (even though they aren’t dogs!), if the same stressful event were to happen to both of them while they were standing side by side, Tom’s circulating cortisol following that stressful event might not be as high as Lauren’s because her axis might be more sensitive. Her processes and pathways might be more susceptible.

Equally, it could be the other way around. Tom could be way more sensitive! (Or his axis could, at least!)

Each individual will adapt and respond differently. This is why it is so important to look at the dog in front of you. You will hear us say this all the time, but this explains why it is so vital. When presented with a stressful situation, every dog will display a very individual response.

The exciting thing is that you can change this response through games by reshaping the dog’s axis!

Wow! Once you understand that this isn’t fixed but is changeable and shapeable, that is powerful! Suddenly, as your own dog’s trainer, or your student’s coach, you see how much of a difference you can make!

One key question it is worth asking in every behaviour consult relates to the environment a dog came from. It is one of the questions in the sample behaviour questionnaire which you can download. Your client might mention that there was constant barking or that their dog came from a breeder with ten other dogs

who were constantly playing with each other. Why is that useful?

While we love to work in the ‘now’ rather than dwelling on the past, this information can help explain why they’ve had a particular struggle and why it is often not the owner’s fault.A phrase you will often hear, and one that we take issue with, is, “It’s not about training the dogs; it’s about training the owner.” This implies that all of the fault for a particular struggle lies with the owner. This is often how your clients come to you, holding the full weight of responsibility for whatever behaviour struggle they are dealing with. It’s what makes these cases so emotionally draining.

We ask that question, and the reason we encourage you to ask that question, is because all the research carried out in every species of animal shows that prenatal stress in the mother influences the stress response in the offspring.There are many studies, including one by Weinstock and another by Koehl et al., where pregnant rats were deliberately stressed, and their babies were then monitored.

You should note that Absolute Dogs doesn’t always agree with the research methodology cited within the Geek programme. However, these peer-reviewed findings are available to illustrate and further your learning.

From an evolutionary, survival perspective, it pays for the babies from that stressed mother to be more reactive to the environment because that means they are more likely to survive. Let’s think about one of our frequently used examples; the happy-go-lucky Labrador that walks up to the rustling bush and gets eaten, versus the savvy, pessimistic Border Collie that sees the rustling bush and gets out of there!

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Crucially, this does not just apply at a learning level; there is a physiological impact too. When people bring dogs from stressful environments into their homes, these dogs have a heightened response to events because they are already hardwired for stress.

This goes way beyond the point of having a bit of an influence. Researchers have actually looked at the changes in rats’ brains from stressed mothers and have found that their brain anatomy changes. The structure and shape of their brain is actually different!If we look at humans, there is a really strong link and association between prenatal stress and future learning difficulties because of this process. There are various theories about why this happens, alongside some good evidence, but it seems to be the case that the CRF, the corticotrophin-releasing factor, is the same, but the anterior pituitary and the adrenal gland are more sensitive to being stimulated.Yet this is absolutely changeable through games. We have to keep saying that.

The key message running all the way through this is that as a trainer you have the power to change and influence this. Nothing is fixed or final. The story isn’t finished.

This is a huge reason for wanting to bring you Geek and Pro Dog Trainer in the first place. We want you to make a difference and change the outcome for these dogs.

So let’s start to get practical.

Everything we do, and every event that happens, is stimulating that system to some extent and producing cortisol.

Compare this to what happens when Lauren goes to the gym. She might get on the treadmill, and for the first 15 minutes of her workout, it might be pretty easy. At the 15-minute mark, she might start feeling it! At 20 minutes, all of a sudden she hits the wall! This is the point where cortisol has increased and overtaken another hormone that has, up to that point, also been increasing during the workout, namely testosterone. The point at which cortisol, the stress hormone, overtakes testosterone, is the point at which the workout all of a sudden feels difficult.

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The exact point at which this occurs will vary between individuals, but the ‘norm’ is about 20 minutes into an exercise session in humans. This explains the recent fashion for short, intense training sessions – what you might know as HIIT training. The same principle applies, whether we’re talking human training or dog training. Short sessions are better.

So what does this mean in terms of dogs and our practice sessions? We want optimum sessions where we maximise learning and maximise the positive benefits.

Some lovely research has been carried out in humans, which has not yet been replicated in dogs, which looks at how we can keep cortisol low. Cortisol is unavoidable, and, as we have already seen, it is necessary. Without cortisol, we would not be alive. If we only had a tiny amount, we would very quickly be eaten by the bear in that bush!

So what impacts how quickly cortisol increases?

• The duration of the session• The amount of rest between sessions• The difficulty of the session

We have been talking about this in the context of exercise, so how does this relate to dog training? You can play a great game that’s suited to a dog’s particular brain. Perhaps you have an apprehensive dog, and you play an optimism game, such as Noise Box.

If you play Noise Box for three minutes, you see that it has a positive effect. If you extend that session to five minutes, you might start to see too much cortisol developing. If you play for

20 minutes, you have more than likely tipped over from having a positive effect to having a detrimental impact because you have reached the point where you are filling your dog’s bucket more than boosting their optimism. Perhaps at this point, you have a 30-second break, and then you get right back to it. The result is that you are increasing your dog’s cortisol more than is needed and beyond the point of benefit.

This is where having a lofty understanding of physiology is no use if you have no concept of applying it practically. You cannot avoid triggering the stress system and filling your dog’s bucket, so what can you control?

• You can reduce the duration by keeping your training sessions short.

• You can build in lots of opportunities for rest. Adequate rest is so essential and much undervalued as an aspect of practical dog training.

• Consider the difficulty level of your session. In the context of human exercise, this might be the difficulty of weights that you’re lifting. In a dog training scenario, look at this in terms of the pressure you are putting on that session.

If we imagine non-Gamechangers – Trainer 1s – dogs will generally get punished for a bad outcome. Imagine how much that is increasing the dog’s cortisol levels. Perhaps that punishment increases the difficulty of the task or game and tries to pressure the dog to perform better. The approach might be to push on and continue punishing when they are not getting it right. That approach will massively fill the dog’s bucket!

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Every interaction your dog has is training them and shaping their brain. This is the reason that management is also training. Whether you’re actively training or not, learning is taking place. By understanding that fact, it shows that you may as well get involved!

That is Brain Stress 101 – have a good understanding of how the process works and can affect your dog, but don’t get caught up in the nitty-gritty.

The key points to take from this lesson:

• How this system causes your dog’s bucket to fill.

• You have full control of how this system looks in the future by playing games.

• How prenatal stress can influence this system.

• • How this system is involved in every training session and interaction you have with dogs.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then seem improbable, and then, when we

summon the will, they soon seem inevitable.Christopher Reeve

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WEEK 1 LESSON 2:

STRESS RESPONSE 102Confession time!

We couldn’t stop at one lesson on stress, because there are two complementary systems in the stress response. Welcome to Stress 102.

In addition to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis covered in the previous lesson, the sympathetic nervous system is also activated.You may have heard of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These two systems work in sync so that when one switches on, the other switches off.

In stressful situations, the sympathetic nervous system switches on, and the parasympathetic nervous system switches off. As with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, this originates in the hypothalamus and moves down to the adrenal glands. Whereas it is the outer shell of the adrenal glands that produces cortisol, in this case, the sympathetic nervous system stimulates that central core (the medulla) and produces two substances; adrenaline and noradrenaline.

Along with cortisol, these chemicals are paying into your dog’s bucket.

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Think of them like neurotransmitters. They are tiny chemicals that affect your dog’s body.

What effects might we expect to see?

Think about how it feels when your adrenaline is high. You might experience the following:

• Increased heart rate• Loss of appetite• Increased need to go to the bathroom• Dilated pupils• Shallower breathing• Pacing, increased movement

A dog whose adrenaline is elevated from the base level would experience increased heart rate, increased inspiratory rate, and shallower breaths.

In addition, there are behavioural changes that you might see in your dog or your student’s dog; salivation, pupil dilation. There will also be increased blood glucose.

Perhaps even more importantly, the parasympathetic nervous system is switched off. The best way to think about the parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and recovery system – the healing system. The result of that is decreased recovery and decreased healing and decreased digestion, and all those other non-essential processes.

On top of all that (arguably less important for pet dogs), there is a downregulation of the reproductive system. Stressed dogs have less desire to reproduce and are less capable of reproducing. If you consider that from an evolutionary perspective, you can understand its value. It would not make sense to bring offspring into a stressful world. You would first need to control the stress by manipulating the environment so that you are safe and no longer stressed. At that point, your reproductive

system starts again, and you can begin reproducing, bringing your offspring into a world that feels safe and where they are more likely to thrive and survive.

The critical thing to remember here is that, while we tend to talk about these processes as being negative, this stress response is hardwired in us because it is incredibly effective and appropriate. This is survival. Without it, we would not have a pulse!

Stress and excitement

There is one additional consideration that you need to understand. The sympathetic nervous system not only turns on when a dog is scared, but the same happens when dogs are excited. What is the significance of that? Healing and repair are equally vital for a pet dog or a sports dog. Keeping a dog in a constant state of high excitement will impact that opportunity for healing and repair significantly.

Consider an agility show or a Flyball event. Those are demanding environments for our dogs. You may think you are doing right by your dog putting them in these situations because they are working dogs, who enjoy what they do, but the reality is that it does not serve them well when you consider everything you know and understand about this stress system.

Having this understanding, being mindful of what you have control over is crucial. For example, Lauren might attend an agility show which lasts six days. Imagine that hypothetically, Blink runs a course and overextends slightly when taking a jump, pulling a muscle. Just a little tweak. At this point, Lauren has a choice. Blink is not limping. She looks a little sore. However, there is healing that needs to happen.

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This is the case after every experience, regardless of whether or not any injury takes place.

Remember, healing is a process that is happening continuously in our bodies. If Lauren were to keep Blink in high excitement, parading her around the agility environment, showing her off, doing training sessions in the evening, etc., healing would not occur for the entire event. Not only that, Blink’s bucket would fill, meaning that healing is unlikely to take place until that bucket has had a chance to empty, at least partly – until the sympathetic nervous system is no longer activated and the parasympathetic nervous system switches back on. Only then can healing commence. How might Lauren manage that practically?

On that first day, as soon as the competition concludes, she would take Blink away from the environment for a calm on-lead walk or a stroll somewhere quiet where they don’t see anyone. Following that, Blink would have some form of active or passive rest time; that might be a Kong in a bed or some time spent in a small penned area of the living room on a bed, or time crated in a vehicle. That evening she might move into another quiet space for more active rest. The whole experience would be peaceful and settled. There would be no high-energy sessions.

These are the type of problems that physiology can cause. Remember, this physiology is what your dog needs to be alive and have a pulse.

As Pro Dog Trainers, it is important to be aware of how you can manipulate this through your choices and games. Now that you understand the two stress systems, the next session will look at how they impact your dog’s choices, the perceptions your dog has, and how they form

memories – and ultimately, what you can do to help!

You have the power to make a difference. That’s pretty exciting!

The sympathetic nervous system not only turns on when a dog is scared, but the same happens when dogs are excited.

What is the significance of that? Healing and repair are equally vital for a pet dog or a sports dog. Keeping a dog in a constant

state of high excitement will impact that opportunity for healing and repair

significantly.Tom Mitchell

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WEEK 1 LESSON 3:

STRESS IMPACTSNow that you understand the two stress systems and how they fit with the analogy of the bucket, we will dive a little deeper into the science to consider how this impacts your dog’s skills and the way they learn and remember things. We will also think about how we can use this to our advantage in our training sessions, rather than it working to our disadvantage.

You can represent stress impacts graphically. The vertical axis represents performance. This might be how well your dog performs a particular activity, but equally, you could substitute “performance” for “good behaviour”.

The horizontal axis represents the level of stress hormone – the activation of those two stress systems. You could label this “stress hormone” or “cortisol”, but equally, you could represent this as “bucket fill”.

A practical example

Let’s take a behaviour, such as loose lead walking, and track the journey of this loose lead walking on the graph as the systems get activated, and the bucket fills. The starting point would be zero stress hormone – the realm of zero reactivity. You may think zero reactivity is the ideal scenario. In reality, completely non-responsive is dead! Not ideal!

It’s important to understand that there is a normal amount of cortisol in the body at any given time because cortisol is required for all the systems to work. There is mild stress (stretch) happening all the time. For example, if you lift your arm, you are applying stress to your physiology, and your body has to account for that.

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If your dog’s stress hormone increases slightly, their loose lead walking might look reasonable. They may have just woken up and still be feeling a little lazy, perhaps lagging behind and needing a little encouragement to get moving and walk with that lovely loose lead.

As your dog becomes a little more energised, the stress hormones increase, and their loose lead walking gets better and better and better and better and better and better and better… until it reaches a plateau. This is the point at which they are awake, they are not too stressed or excited or scared, and they can walk beautifully with a lovely loose lead.

Many people reach this point and fail to understand why their dog’s behaviour or ability to perform a specific skill or task has suddenly deteriorated so spectacularly.

By increasing the stress hormone, you eventually reach the point where the behaviour no longer exists. This is the point where the stress hormone (your dog’s bucket) is too full, too activated, and consequently, performance is lost.

It is important to be aware of the tipping point – the point of peak performance, after which you will see deterioration in behaviour.

This is a crucial understanding for the dog in front of you.

This tipping point might be the point at which the bucket is 90% full. The point of zero ability to perform the behaviour is the point of bucket overflow and a deterioration in the desired behaviour (in this case, loose lead walking). You might also start to see other undesirable behaviours such as barking, lunging, and biting the lead because the bucket has overflowed.

Beyond this point, the behaviour starts to deteriorates as the stress hormones increase.

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Importantly, this same curve applies to your dog’s reactions to things and their perceptions of the environment. As the bucket fills, their perceptions are altered to the point that things previously of no concern are suddenly something that worries them. On the left-hand side of the tipping point, your dog might happily walk past a child with no concern or reaction. However, walking past that same child when your dog has gone beyond that tipping point might result in a different response. Perhaps at this point, they bark and lunge.

This is a powerful understanding for you to have as an owner or an instructor.

As concept trainers, you can apply this understanding to any concept.

For every dog, each concept will have its own curve. Your dog will be optimistic up to a point, but once that bucket reaches a certain level of fill, they will become more pessimistic, even despite your games.

This explains how stress impacts a skill or a concept your dog already knows. But interestingly, and importantly, stress also affects memories – how they are processed – what is scientifically known as long term potentiation. When a learning event occurs, it is stored away in the brain and can be retrieved whenever that same situation happens again.

Let’s put this into perspective…

Picture a dog that barks at other dogs. At some point, that dog would have had a learning experience that has led to that behaviour.

That might have been a one-time learning experience, what’s known as a flashbulb memory. Perhaps a big black Labrador ran into that dog from nowhere, totally unexpectedly, and bowled them over. From that point on, whenever that dog sees other dogs, or perhaps particularly sees other dogs running, the memory gets triggered, and they bark, without even knowing why they are barking.

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So how is it that a dog can learn something negative in one stressful event but cannot learn something from you when they are stressed?This is where we need to understand how memories work.

There is a 2007 review of this by Diamond et al. Memory research is very complex and very dry, but Tom did the 10 years of study, so you don’t have to! Instead, let’s summarise the learning in 10 minutes, delivered in a fun way, arming you to share that knowledge and save more dogs’ lives in the process. We are all about equipping you to get real-life results!

Long term memory – “long term potentiation” – is stored much better and enhanced by stress, but this is dependent on when the stress happens. Let’s take two examples.

Scenario 1

Your dog is stressed after a busy week full of opportunities for them to react to things such

as fireworks, stressful walks, or many visitors to your home. Their bucket is full, and the stress has been developing over time, and you want to teach your dog a new trick. In this scenario, stress will decrease your dog’s ability to remember. Any learning is diminished due to stress. Your dog is not in the best position to learn.

In this scenario, stress decreases memory.

Scenario 2

Your dog gets bowled over by a Chihuahua, who came from nowhere, knocked your dog over and bit your dog’s ear. Up to this point, your dog was totally fine, happy go lucky, wagging his tail and loving life.

In this scenario, the stress and the learning happen at the same time. This event is known as a flashbulb memory. The stress (the cortisol/full bucket) cause enhanced memory storage.

Has your dog had a flashbulb memory? Spend some time thinking about all the different scenarios where you think your dog has experienced this kind of learning.

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This explains why stress can reduce memory when the time between the stress and the learning are far apart and can increase the ability to learn and store memories when the stress and the learning happen simultaneously.

We’re Gamechangers, so how can we flip this on its head?

Firstly, you would never wish Scenario 1 to happen. You want to be making sure that your dog’s buckets are kept as empty as possible, and be mindful not to put them in those situations or to try and work with them when they are already stressed. Be conscious of the fill of your dog’s bucket and continually think about how you can adapt that. How big is the hole in that bucket? How quickly is it going to empty? When is it appropriate to try and teach them something? A good example of this is Lauren’s agility dogs. Lauren will tend to pick winter to teach her dogs new skills because summer is often very competition-heavy, so more bucket-emptying time is needed.

Secondly, wouldn’t it be great to have some of that flashbulb memory instant learning that gets stored away, but as a positive experience for things that you want your dog to learn?

Take loose lead walking as an example again…

The way to think about this is that arousal and learning need to be applied very close together. This is where we use the idea of a surprise reward. Imagine you are in a new environment, and your dog is happily mooching. If they spontaneously come close to you or offer you some orientation, tell them how great they are and sprint with them a little distance. You have applied positive stress and learning because you’ve communicated to your dog that they did something great and have rewarded that with a high arousal sprint reward.

In turn, you have a memory that gets stored away and sticks there.

Don’t undervalue the benefits of surprise rewards as a strategy. You can become too focused on the training session and not enough on the reward event. If you can find moments to give your dog a surprise reward, you will find you have a potent learning tool.

In summary, these stress systems influence how your dog performs things that they already know. This can even apply to concepts such as self-control, optimism, flexibility and focus.

We have also explained how these stress systems impact memory in a bad way and in a very, very bad way, and how, as Pro Dog Trainers and Geeks, you can turn that into good by using these strategies. Think about how you can incorporate this into your classes!

This is the science that gets you real-life results.

Test surprise rewards with your own dog! It’s a great way to get that energy up, and they make you feel good too!

We’d love to hear about your surprise reward success in the group!

GAMECHANGER CHALLENGEGAMECHANGER CHALLENGE

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WEEK 1 LESSON 4:

PASSIVE AND ACTIVE COPERSYou have learnt that stress (or “stretch”) is a good thing. You know that it serves a purpose, and you understand that you can manipulate it. As Pro Dog Trainers, it is beneficial to identify what kind of coper a particular dog is before starting to work with them.

What do we mean by that?

Whenever you are stressed, you cope in some way. What kind of coper you are will determine the behaviours you select as part of your coping strategy.

Active copers

Imagine you are in the queue at the supermarket and feeling stressed because you need to get somewhere. Now imagine that the person in front of you in the line has forgotten something and asks if they can go back for the item they forgot. Five minutes later, they return with an avocado. Then they remember they also forgot cornflakes. Ten minutes later, they come back again.

All this time, you are moving about, fidgeting, perhaps clicking your fingers or slapping your leg. An active coper might also become quite angry and vocal. Taking it to the extreme, they might start throwing

punches (or perhaps they throw the avocado). A coping strategy aims to reduce the emotional stress felt.

To link this back to dog behaviour, imagine a dog who is worried by sheep. An active coper might run up and bark at the sheep, possibly even bite the sheep as a way of actively coping with their feelings of worry.

Passive copers

Passive copers deal with their feelings of stress altogether differently. If you were to imagine a dog who is a passive coper in a re-home or a rescue kennel, you might expect to see that dog staring at a wall, or sitting in a corner trembling, or head down curled in a ball.

These are coping strategies that are often very distressing to see.

Whether a dog chooses an active or a passive coping strategy, the aim is to improve the situation. The desired outcome is the same, but the ways they go about trying to achieve that outcome are different. Active and passive copers have different physiological and behavioural responses.

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Having a framework that you can work within as a Pro Dog Trainer is valuable because it will help you understand what is going on in a particular situation.

Some of this framework comes from our own experience of what works when it comes to transforming behaviour and how to tackle the different types of coper.

Active Copers

As Pro Dog Trainers, most of your work is likely to be with dogs who are active copers because owners whose dogs deal actively are more likely to struggle with the behaviours those dogs choose as their coping strategy. These are the dogs that bark, the dogs that lunge, the dogs that chase. In essence, these are the dogs that display their struggles more outwardly.

Active copers use and display a more comprehensive range of behaviours – and these behaviours are often inconvenient or challenging to the owners who are dealing with them. These owners have dogs whose struggles impact their lives significantly, whether that is stopping their ability to socialise or making walks stressful and challenging. They might be encountering behaviours that mean their dog is not a pleasure to have at home. Perhaps they have had noise complaints from their neighbours. They are experiencing very obvious struggles.

The exciting thing about active copers is that barking, lunging, or engaging in whatever behaviour they choose reduces their circulating stress hormone levels – the naughty behaviours serve a purpose.

It is worth acknowledging here that some dogs have very unusual ways of coping. These are referred to as “abnormal repetitive behaviours” and are discussed in greater detail later in the course. These dogs might spin and hold their own tail or fly-catch. They select a behaviour that is repetitive and the same every time. These dogs are still active copers, and we need to treat them as such. They happen to have chosen one particular, slightly abnormal behaviour as their coping strategy.

Passive Copers

Passive copers do things a little differently. As trainers, you may see fewer of these cases. If you own a passive coper, they may not influence you as much, in the sense that they don’t always cause such a ‘problem’. However, in many ways, they are more worrying. Why?

Passive copers have reduced behaviour expression – they effectively ‘do’ less – but despite the aim being to cope with the situation and reduce the stress, their stress hormone is actually greater, relative to that of the active copers.

Passive coping is a very ineffective way of making these dogs feel better. Their choice of coping strategy is more appropriate or convenient for the owner, but it will be your job as a Pro Dog Trainer to explain that a a dog who is a passive coper is worried, and that there is a need to do something about that.

The Framework

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Is your dog a thinker or a doer?How do they cope when faced with a worrying or stressful situation? What do you observe?

Behaviour transformationIn terms of transforming behaviour, many dog trainers and behaviourists would be quick to say that reactive dogs who bark and lunge are very challenging cases to resolve.

Despite this, in a 2010 study, Blackwell et al. found that dogs who chose an active coping strategy found it much easier to learn a new behaviour than those who selected a passive coping strategy.

This fits well with the experience seen with Naughty but Nice dogs. While there is always a hopeful prognosis for both types of dog, the active copers are always less worrying and more straightforward. Why is that?

To work with a passive coper, you first have to switch the way they cope to be able to teach them an alternative response.

Lauren’s Border Collie Tiki is an excellent example of a passive coper. She is fearful of loud noises and would choose to cope by staring at walls and hiding in corners. For her, movement was fundamental, whether getting her to put her feet on something or engaging in a scatter feed.

Why is movement so important?

You cannot teach an alternative thing to do until you teach them to ‘do’ something in the first place. ‘Doing’ is the key!

Doing means moving. A passive coper needs to opt for movement before you can teach them a specific way to move. Foundational to helping a passive coper is teaching ‘doing and movement’. It is worth noting that this ‘doing and movement’ does not need to be too prescriptive or complicated. It is important to work in a very flexible way with these dogs.

You might encourage a dog to come out of a hiding spot, chase a piece of food across the floor and then settle on a bed with a Kong. For some dogs, that would be a big deal!

Movement does not have to mean going for a walk. It can mean encouraging a dog to mooch around rather than finding somewhere to go and hide. The exciting thing is that you can change this in a matter of weeks if you put your focus in the right area. When Tom has a behaviour consult for a passive coper, he might suggest that all that dog’s daily food allowance is

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movement-based games with absolutely no rewarding stillness for the first three weeks. The focus is on getting that dog moving. The owner may question how that will help with their dog’s particular struggle, whatever that happens to be. How is movement relevant?

Representing this as a diagram, where movement is the base level, can be a constructive way of communicating this.

Taking this approach, you are teaching the dog to cope actively, and in being active, to move away from the worrying situation rather than towards it.

Doing/movement and disengagement build on each other.

Understanding this and applying the learning practically is vital for your dog and as a Pro Dog Trainer.

This is the science that gets real-life results. This is why we’re cutting out 20-30 years of immersing yourself in the science and showing you how to ground and apply the learning to see that transformation!

Only once you have a dog that understands that they should cope actively with what they are worried about, and in being active, they should move away from it can you teach true optimism.

As Pro Dog Trainers, we can sometimes miss a few of the foundational steps. Perhaps you are working with a passive coper, and you identify that dog is clearly in need of optimism. You might decide that the first game to introduce that dog to is Noise Box. In doing so, you have missed out on those first two foundational layers, which would have told you that a passive coper is unlikely to get on all that well with Noise Box.

Considering those foundation blocks is crucial for true optimism. Building layer on layer, starting with that wide base (‘doing and movement’), is essential, both in your classes and for your dog.

Whether you are working with a dog who is worried about other dogs, worried about noises, or worried about being separated, one of the first questions that you should be asking yourself is, “What kind of coper is this dog? Do I need to change the way that they cope? Do they need a foundation of ‘doing and movement’ before I can teach them disengagement and optimism?”

Do this, and you will see success. This is the science that gets real-life results.

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WEEK 1 LESSON 5:

CONCEPTS 101Woohoo, brain week!

You have covered the physiology of stress, and understand that this leads to a coping strategy. How can this be put into a framework which allows you to organise all your knowledge? Can this be linked back to concepts?

Absolutely!

Let’s frame this as Struggle to Strength 101. This is the way you are going to approach specific struggles throughout the course.

Let’s look at it this way. Every dog has a brain, and when you put that brain in a specific situation, you will get a particular outcome based on how that brain is shaped. Regardless of whether that happens to be a good or bad outcome, you will always get an outcome. You are in control of whether that outcome is good or bad.

You know that events impact your dog, and you know that events are happening all the time.

Before the event is received and processed by the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary, it is filtered. Much like the cliché of rose-tinted glasses, this filter puts a particular slant on every event that your dog experiences.

This filter is called perception.

Whether an event is transmitted to your dog’s brain as a positive or negative event is based on perception.

Once an event has passed through that perception filter and processed by the hypothalamus and the anterior pituitary, it reaches those two arms of the coping strategy to produce a physiological and a behavioural element.

For example, that coping strategy might be an increase in stress hormone (physiological) and barking and lunging (behavioural).

The best way to think of the physiological response is as an arousal response.

Imagine a positive event, such as an overflowing bowl of food appearing. Your dog’s perception of the overflowing bowl of food is positive, so that triggers a very excited response in the brain (a physiological response), which leads to whining, wiggling and tail wagging, potentially with some pacing and bouncing added in (a behavioural response). Your dog is experiencing an increase in arousal. That all seems very straightforward.

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This is where we want you to start grouping concepts in your mind.

There are three groups of concepts. It is worth noting that this groundbreaking understanding is changing all the time, but right now, this is the current science.

Perception concepts

These are the concepts that we can teach our dogs that influence the way they perceive an event.

Optimism: This concept influences whether your dog perceives a new or slightly strange event positively or negatively.

Flexibility: Does your dog perceive the same event to be the same every time, or do they perceive it to be different?

Generalisation: Does your dog perceive an event to be good or bad in one situation, and does that transfer to other environments?

This is exciting learning! Get excited! However much you want to, you cannot control every event your dog experiences in life. You can try to gently shape those experiences and help manage what your dog is exposed to, but there will inevitably be times when dogs get themselves into situations or events will happen

that you have no control over. Despite that, it can feel like controlling the events your dog experiences is the area you have most have control over because how on earth can you possibly have control over your dog’s brain? The reality is, that is where you have most control! You really can shape and reshape a brain!

Within the realm of these perception concepts, you can prepare your dog for whatever events they might encounter in life and shape how they perceive them.

Arousal concepts

The next set of concepts relate to that physiological response and impact what happens in the hypothalamus.

Thinking in Arousal: Is your dog able to think when in a state of high arousal? Can they listen and respond appropriately?

Calmness: This should ideally be your dog’s default state. Can your dog remain neutral and relaxed despite sudden changes in the environment? Are they able to settle when not actively engaged in a task?

Arousal up, Arousal down: How quickly can the system go from being switched on to being switched off? This is a really fundamental concept for all dogs, not least for sports dogs and working breeds.

How does concept training fit into this?

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Choice concepts

These are the concepts that impact the choices your dog makes. When presented with a particular event, a particular perception or a particular bucket fill, what do they do?

A good example of this is Tom’s dog Ketone, who has an infatuation with other dogs. Her perception when she sees another dog is positive, and she gets extremely excited, so one of the choice concepts that we’ve worked on really hard with her is disengagement.

Disengagement: Can your dog acknowledge that something is none of their business or remove their attention and focus from something without having to engage with it first?

Grit: This is your dog’s ability to push longer and harder in the absence of a reward and to continue to want to work with you.

Tolerance of frustration: When your dog doesn’t have immediate access to a resource, whether that is food or even you, does frustration kick in? Can reinforcement be delayed without an increase in arousal, decrease in arousal or change in responsiveness?

Thinkers versus doers: This is the concept that impacts how your dog copes with stress (actively or passively, as we discussed in the previous lesson).

There is naturally some overlap between concepts. Impulse control and tolerance of frustration, for example, are both at play within the context of agility.

Lauren’s dog Everest, for example, perceives an agility event to be hugely exciting. Her chase drive is high. Concepts dictate whether she can disengage and offer a level of impulse control that allows her to do what is expected of her in that environment.

It’s exciting to think that what was once perceived as a closed black box – that feeling that our dogs’ personalities were fixed and not changeable, meaning we would have to change their lives, the events, and the environments around them to account for that – is infinitely changeable.

By grouping the concepts in this way, you can identify whether you are working with a perception struggle, a bucket/arousal issue, a challenge with the way a dog responds to a situation or a choice struggle.

Once you understand that, you can target them with their specific concepts and reshape the black box.

You can reshape the brain without having to worry about changing the events in life. That is the definition of a Pro Dog Trainer and what it means to be a PDT Geek. This is the science that gets real-life results!

It’s exciting to think that what was once perceived as a closed black box – that

feeling that our dogs’ personalities were fixed and not changeable, meaning we would have to change their lives, the events, and the environments around

them to account for that – is infinitely changeable.

Tom Mitchell

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