Try coziness

Monday agility, Tuesday with mistress to the office, Wednesday free running group, Thursday trip to the mall. Soon the week is over again and on weekends the special excursions are coming up.

Our dogs often seem to have more on their agenda than we do. "Yeah, why not" most of you might be asking yourself now. After all, there are so many ways to keep your dog busy. Likewise it is completely clear that one would like to take along its four-legged friend everywhere. And so it is also very often suggested to us. "The dog belongs busy, otherwise undesirable behavior arises" or "The dog must be socialized" are sentences, which one hears very frequently in this connection.

Is that now ok or even wrong? Of course, it is important to keep your dog busy according to his disposition and thus to strengthen the bond with each other, to keep him physically and mentally busy, so that he is satisfied. But how much activity is good for our dogs and can too much activity lead to problems?

Let's take the example above: Quite a lot of program for one week, considering that our dogs rest/sleep up to 20 hours a day. It is very praiseworthy if you want to keep busy with your dog and integrate him into your life, because that is why you decided to get a dog. And not, so that this must fristen its existence as long-term unemployed alone at home - the latter can be just as harmful.

As always however the dose makes the poison and who expects now a general statement, how much occupation a dog needs then now, will be unfortunately disappointed. For one dog, such a week as described above is briefly no problem, but for the other dog a total stimulus overload. This depends among other things on the personality of the respective dog, the collected experiences, the socialization but also hereditary factors. Thus, they also react differently to one and the same situation.

Let's take a foreign animal protection dog as an example. This dog may have been born in a small village and has had little or no contact with humans. This dog has never experienced civilization as we know it and will tend to be overwhelmed by it. Too many people and animals in close quarters, street noise, smells, shopping malls, etc. cause stress to most of these dogs. The same is true for puppies that have grown up very isolated and have not been accustomed correctly or at all to our everyday life or its stimuli. These dogs have enough stimuli to be processed without our intervention. If they do not get the necessary rest to process these impressions, this can quickly have negative effects. This can manifest itself in hyperactivity, for example, or in other undesirable behaviors such as constant barking, increased sensitivity to stimuli, fear and restlessness, or overly aggressive behavior.

To cope with the situation, one visits the local dog school. There, one is often told that the dog is underemployed and a vicious cycle begins. With employment and obedience training is tried to stop the undesirable behavior. And thus the dog is additionally loaded, although it would need actually only somewhat more rest breaks. This is not to say that employment is wrong. On the contrary, often the dogs that are presented to us trainers are really underemployed and therefore show undesirable behavior.

For the described foreign animal protection dog, however, additional employment would probably be a further burden, since it is exposed to additional stimuli and is thus not at all receptive to training. Conversely, a specifically selected occupation can be perceived by this dog as pleasant and be used for therapeutic purposes in training. This requires a good anamnesis and the trainer should take a close look at the respective human-dog team. Only then can an individual training plan be developed for each team.

The same applies to socialization. Puppy owners often mean too well and flood the dog with new stimuli without giving the little one enough breaks. After all, I have to confront the puppy with as many stimuli as possible so that he is socialized to them. And all this is best done in the shortest possible time. However, the learning effect will be lost if the puppy does not have time to process the stimuli. And this happens during the breaks. Besides, with too much program it can easily happen that the dogs never learn not to be on it and are overwhelmed with doing nothing.

And again, this manifests itself in undesirable behavior. The vicious circle starts all over again.

Therefore, it should be said in conclusion that need-based employment and socialization are of course important, but sufficient rest periods are almost more important. Because it is during these breaks that the experienced/learned is processed and the body recovers.

Unfortunately, the topic of resting and learning is often neglected in dog schools as well as in the families of the dogs. Think about it: When was the last time you just stood there with your dog and let the situation work on you, sat on a bench and enjoyed the silence of the forest or looked at the flowers in the meadow?

Mostly we rush from appointment to appointment. But a day has only 24 hours. We sleep on average 8 hours of it. The rest of the time we are always under power. And our dogs often accompany us. They certainly don't get 16-20 hours of rest. At the same time, we expect them to adapt and behave in a socially acceptable way. In order for them to do this, we have to give them the rest they need to become a relaxed everyday companion. Of course, this also involves some training. We should confront our dogs with various stimuli as early as possible and integrate them into our everyday life.

This ideally starts in puppyhood. And this again and again, so that a habituation occurs. Dogs learn their whole life long. But rest is also an essential part of it! It is too tempting to want to show him everything, to introduce him to every dog etc.. Also fatal: to occupy an active dog more and more, because he must be tired at some point. A fallacy. Even and especially active dogs can and should learn rest, otherwise they quickly become adrenaline junkies and can never get enough.

But how can I give my dog the rest he needs?

At home, I can establish a fixed resting place for this purpose. This helps the dog to relax and to give up responsibility. Likewise with friends or in the restaurant. If the resting place or the blanket is well established, it is a super aid in training and can signal to the dog that it is now time for a break.

On the road you can also practice rest and switch off. Depending on the dog, I can only build this up slowly and in small steps. Often it is enough to just stop for a moment with the dog on the leash and do nothing. Extremely hard for many dogs not to be in action all the time. In addition, they are confronted with many stimuli outside.

Therefore, I start such a training in a low-stimulus environment and gradually build in the stimuli or choose places where there is more going on. This is how I increase the training. There are many more ways to help your dogs to be more calm. However, it would go beyond the scope of this article to list all of them here and they always have to be individually adapted to the respective human-dog team.

We humans know ourselves how it is when we are in constant stress. We are then often mentally and / or physically battered. Our dogs do not go there differently. In the best case the dog provides itself rest breaks. If this is not the case, then I as an owner must help the dog. As with other trainings, this is not done by the way. You should bring time and patience for it. But it is worth it. If your dog is relaxed, you can take him everywhere without him being stressed or you attracting negative attention. And another positive side effect: You yourself slow down a bit. According to the motto "less is more".

Your Anja with Sammy

Click here for more information about Anja Papenberg, Martin Rütter DOGS