1. The Bucket Concept

---

Do you know someone who gets easily stressed out compared to you or maybe you can pick out a friend who never gets stressed out? Everyone is different. Everyone has a different tolerance level to stress. You may have a low tolerance level on one day but another day or with another person, you can cope with a lot more. This is due to our stress levels consistently going up and down. How does this work?

The Bucket Concept

Everyone has a bucket.

Every bucket has a hole in the bottom (this is a good thing!) 

Overview:

Big bucket and big hole = high tolerance to stress and calms down quickly

Big bucket and small hole = high tolerance to stress but takes a long time to calm down

Small bucket and big hole = low tolerance to stress but calms down quickly

Small bucket and small hole = low tolerance to stress and takes a long time to calm down

Size of the Bucket

The bucket can be big, where nothing stresses you out, or the bucket can be very small, where one slight difference in routine stresses you out to the max. This is because everyone has different levels of stress that they are able to cope with. Consider how big your bucket might be. Is it a small bucket, where you get overwhelmed quite quickly?  

Size of the Bucket's Hole

Everyone calms down eventually. Within the Bucket concept, this is because every bucket has a hole in the bottom, to allow the bucket to empty. The size of the hole represents how quickly someone calms down. Some people may chill out quite quickly (biiiiig hole), while others take a long time to find calm (tiny hole). 

What does a full Bucket look like?

A full bucket leads to a dog/person that might "lash out" quickly. Maybe your dog barks or lunges at other dogs when they see them? A dog who barks at everything out of the window? A dog who asks for space by growling when you go to stroke them?

Anyone or any animal who has a full bucket is close to having an argument with you or others. Consider if you are super stressed out and someone says "eugh, why can't you just...INSERT ANNOYING/SARKY REQUEST HERE" That sounds a bit like your bucket is full, if your response is automatically to snap back.

How does the Bucket empty?

As long as you can take a break, the Bucket will slowly empty. If you continue to add to the bucket, it cannot empty. 

For dogs, it takes can take multiple days for a bucket to empty, after spilling over. That is a looooooong time but it will only empty if we give it a chance. 

Give your dog time to chill out if they've spilled over. Give yourself time too. Follow the steps below and then go to read the 2. Creating Calmness section further down.

How can you help your dog's stress level:

Step 1: Draw your Dog's Bucket

Is it big or is it small? How big is the hole? The downloadable PDF below has some common examples of things that could be adding to your dog's bucket. Notice how full you think your dog's bucket is right now and consider what has happened in the last three days (at least) that could have filled it up.

Step 2: Identify when your dog is most stressed

Step 3: What has happened in the last three days that could have lead to your dog's bucket overspilling?

Step 4: Limit your dog's exposure to the most stressful things and develop more calm time for your dog.

You have used the Bucket to identify the triggers your dog struggles with. Now it is time to help manage your dog's environment to help reduce those triggers and empty the bucket. Note that this is a VERY important step and should not be skipped. You won't be able to empty your dog's bucket if you don't change their environment to prevent habits. For example, if your dog sits by the window and barks at people walking passed, there is only so much the bucket can empty if you don't cover the windows, as people will continually fill their bucket. You will also be unable to train a new behaviour if they are constantly triggered by the window. Without an empty bucket, we are unlikely to be able to shift their state of mind to be able to learn.

How can you manage your dog's environment to help them?

Step 1: Write one thing you will change in each room of your house and area of the garden that can help your dog

Step 2: Start making one of those changes in the living room

Step 3: Monitor your dog's bucket after 1 week - has anything changed in their behaviour?

Following on from the Bucket Concept, we now understand why our dogs may be exploding over the smallest things. To us, we can't see why the postman is such a big deal but to them, that postman is the tip of the iceberg of annoyances that have plagued them over the last few weeks! 

When the bucket is full, this sets of a biological chain reaction in our bodies. To go a little nerdy here, our sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight or freeze) is activated when we're stressed. During this time, our nervous system is trying to find a way to safety. The only way we can calm ourselves down is with time and space, so we can call this the Get out of Dodge state.

I wouldn't ask you to run a marathon if you've only trained for a 5k! We can't ask our dogs to behave differently if we haven't helped them work towards it in the first place.

Our dogs are the same. They cannot learn when their bodies are in the Get out of Dodge state. In order for us to help teach our dogs a different way to approach a situation, e.g. walk passed a dog and not lunge or bark at it, we need to get their biological system to move from the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight or freeze) to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). We can call this the Calmness state. 

Once we are in the Calmness state, we can start to teach our dogs some cool new stuff that will help them work through their struggles. 

a) Never train IN the situation - Fight or flight - no learning here

b) Always train FOR the situation - Calmness state - learning here

Now we understand why calmness is important, we can work on developing a more calm environment for our dogs. How can we do that? Four simple steps can make a huge difference for our dogs:

1) Decrease Triggers* - As you did with the bucket, you should already know what triggers your dog most and other things that may slightly set them off. Try and reduce these. For example, if your dog barks at everything and anything on a walk, maybe stop walks for a few days and try again. Instead, work on the rest of the Calmness tips to provide enough enrichment. Also work on fun tricks with your dogs so they're learning new skills! *See 2. Management has helped you with this step already. 

2) Increase opportunity - Looking at your daily pattern, where can you decrease the triggers and increase opportunities to be calm? Sometimes training instead of that second walk can make all the difference. Dogs need a minimum of 16 hours UNINTERRUPTED sleep a day. How can you increase the time they have to sleep? Maybe go and watch TV for an hour instead of chasing them in the garden or playing tug tug for hours on end.

3) Reward Calmness - Where your dog is being calm, e.g. they may choose to lie down or go to their bed, you can reinforce this behaviour by walking over an placing a treat by their head or maybe you just say "good girl". Rewarding the small snippets of calm choices will help your dog to realise that being in that state of mind is rewarding! This is likely to increase the times they choose to be calm! 

TROUBLESHOOT:

- Gentle voice: Only reward in a calm way, e.g. "Niiiiice" in a low voice, not "WELL DONE YOU GOOD DOG, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU"...we are working to increase calmness not excitement.

- Slow food delivery: When rewarding with food, deliver it slowly. 

- Don't reward fake calm: Our dogs are clever and may "fake" calmness. Try not to reward this and only reward real calmness.

4) Enrichment - With all of the above steps, you may notice a decrease in activity that your dog does, such as reducing walks, length of walks, times of walks or reduced play time perhaps? Your dog still needs to feel like they've had a busy day! Enrichment is key. Not enrichment that YOU like though, enrichment your DOG likes. Enrichment can be fun or can be training, but it should be balanced. Not just training and not just fun. For example, you may normally go for a walk. Instead, why don't you set a timer for an hour and do the following:

a) Train a new trick for five minutes

b) Take them out to the loo for five minutes

c) Come back inside and scatter feed some food on the floor, sit down and relax for 10 minutes.

d) If your dog is sleeping, let them sleep and leave them to rest. If they are looking for entertainment, get one of their toys and let them play with it for five minutes. 

e) Once they are done playing, scatter feed on the floor, sit down and relax for 10 minutes

f) Repeat a-e 

What have you done in the above?

a) Enrichment

b) Daily life necessities

c) Increase opportunity for calmness and reward calmness

d) Enrichment (play) or Increase opportunity for calmness (rest)

e) Increase opportunity for calmness and reward calmness

Throughout the hour you have also decreased the triggers by doing something completely different where their triggers are not around! 

The most important thing to note about this pattern however is that after each exciting thing (enrichment), they go and relax afterwards. This trains the brain to move back into the Calmness state more easily. Find any and all opportunity to help your dog move to the Calmness state after any form of medium to high excitement.

How can you help your dog to be more calm?

Step 1: Write one thing you will change or do for each step

If you have more than one, brilliant! We can talk about other steps you can do when we have our sessions.

Step 2: Start making changes straight away

Step 3: Monitor your dog's bucket after 1 week - has anything changed in their behaviour?

Dogs naturally greet each other in a set of steps:

1. See/Hear - your dog sees or hears another dog and their behaviour may start to change. ACTION - Watch or video your dog's behaviour and see how their body reacts to hearing or seeing another dog.

2. Approach - Dogs will approach each other. This is a common cause of reactivity where dogs are forced to greet each other in a direct way on pavements.

3. Face to Face - Greeting and sniffing each other face to face doesn't last long. If this is longer than 1 second, consider working on this section.

4. Rear to Rear - Sniffing the rear helps to gain information on the other dog, who are they and how are they feeling. Some dogs struggle with this bit and feel uncomfortable with other dogs going near their rear.

5. Engage ... or not - Both dogs will decide whether to engage with the other dog or not by initiating play or moving on from each other.

If your dog isn't progressing from one step to another, are they:

• Jumping from one step to another, e.g. 1 Seeing a dog -> 5 Initiates play immediately? Your dog may be overexcited by other dogs and needs to calm down in order to greet other dogs more appropriately.
• Cannot progress through all of the steps e.g. 1, 2 -> disengaging (5) and moving away? Your dog may be struggling with confidence around dogs.
• Becomes reactive at one of the steps e.g. 1 Sees a dog and starts lunging/barking? This could be one of many things. Perhaps your dog is frustrated and wants to greet the other dog quicker. Perhaps your dog is worried or fearful that something bad will happen when they greet the other dog, so they start to react? Perhaps the other dog cannot greet THEM normally because of being on lead and your dog takes it personally. If your dog is struggling with one of the steps, go BACK a step and help your dog to disengage and learn positive associations with the previous step.

Your dog isn't you:

• You may be much more sociable than your dog! Some dogs, just like some people, have little tolerance for others and that's OKAY. Accept your dog for where they are, that will give them more confidence and likely help with the greeting chain anyway. Help them to move away if they don't want to progress. 
• Never force your dog to say hello to others. Do not drag your dog over, pick them up or push them into another dog or person. They are also individuals. Imagine saying to a friend "hey, I don't want to go on that roller coaster, it makes me really worried" but they put you in handcuffs, strap you in and you're on it whether you like it or not. Being made to do something we don't want does many things:

1) They may lose confidence around you

2) They may lose their trust in you

3) They may become more worried in similar situations

If you can see your dog is struggling, support them and say "sorry, he's just not into your dog today" and move away. Your dog (and you) will be happier for it. 

We are not teaching dogs how to communicate:

We do not have to teach a child to vocalise, it comes with the growth of their vocal chords. We don't have to teach dogs HOW to greet one another appropriately. We only have to slow them down and create positive environments where they can see that going from step 1 to 5 can be a fun thing. 

We also don't expect our dogs to be friends with everyone! Are you friends with everyone you meet? I think not! 

Step 1: Print the pdf below

Step 2: Video your dog

Video how your dog interacts with other dogs. Which part of the greeting chain is broken?

Step 3: Work on the previous step

If your dog is unable to get to rear to rear, let your dog greet other dogs at the face to face, then recall your dog away and reward them for their recall. Over time, your dog may get the confidence to move to the next step. If they do, fantastic! If they don't, no problem, just keep going with the recall at the previous stage.