Context is critical for understanding stress or displacement behaviors in dogs to accurately assess their well-being and address potential issues. Recognizing stress-related behaviors in dogs is important since they indicate various stressors such as fear, anxiety, discomfort, or overstimulation.
Common mild stress-related behaviors are lip licking, scratching, yawning, sneezing, stretching, tucking their tail, shaking off, or raised hackles.
Indicators of moderate stress include avoidance, heavy panting, wrinkled brow, tongue flicks, lowered tail, whining, behaving cautiously or reluctantly while approaching, or pushing against a person to relieve stress.
Extreme stress behaviors include heavy drooling or frothing, pinched ears, hunched shoulders, lowered head, whale eye, arched back, wrinkled brow, flared whiskers and lumpy whisker bed, dilated pupils in strong light, withdrawing into themselves, belching or passing gas, shrinking away, enlarged facial blood vessels, stiff or braced legs, and trying to escape.
By understanding the context of stress or displacement behaviors, pet parents can identify triggers, reduce stressors, provide comfort and support, and create a safe and calm environment. This proactive approach improves the dog’s quality of life and strengthens the human-dog bond.
What's The Difference?
Stress focuses a dog’s energy and is used to cope with a specific situation. While stress is sometimes positive, distress is always negative. Distress leads to physical and mental issues. Severe distress leads to a decrease in physical health such that the mind and body no longer operate normally.
Stress in dogs refers to the body’s response to a challenge or threat, which can be either positive or negative (distress), leading to increased arousal and physiological changes. Distress specifically refers to negative stress that exceeds the dog’s ability to cope, resulting in emotional or physical strain, often accompanied by behaviors indicating discomfort or anxiety.
Recognizing Stress is Important
Stress and distress are significant aspects of dog behavior, and recognizing stress-related and displacement behaviors is crucial to understanding a dog’s emotional state. Stress focuses a dog’s energy and is used to cope with a specific situation. Stress is the body’s response to a challenge, which can be either positive or negative. Distress specifically refers to negative stress that exceeds the dog’s ability to cope.
Identifying stress behaviors is important because it allows guardians to intervene and alleviate the source of stress. Common stress-related behaviors are anxiety-displacement behaviors like lip/nose licking, yawning, or sneezing, shaking, whale eye, dilated pupils, increased shedding, and certain vocalizations. Panting, drooling, pacing, scratching, sniffing the ground, or sudden disinterest in activities are also examples of stress. These behaviors serve as coping mechanisms for dogs to deal with stressful situations or conflicting emotions.
Fight-or-flight response results in long-term negative consequences if the dog is in this mode often. In a fight-or-flight response, the amygdala tells the pituitary gland to release cortisone, adrenaline, and noradrenaline to assist the dog in handling threatening circumstances. It is important to understand that once in the fight-or-flight response, the dog is no longer in control of their body.
The fight-or-flight response in dogs triggers physiological changes such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, dilation of airways, the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, and redirection of blood flow to muscles for quick action. It prepares dogs to either confront a threat (fight) or flee from it (flight), aiding in survival during perceived danger.
Recognizing the early signs of the fight-or-flight response in dogs allows caregivers to intervene before the dog reaches a heightened state of stress or aggression. By identifying early indicators such as dilated pupils, tense body posture, increased alertness, panting, trembling, or heightened reactivity, we can de-escalate the situation, provide reassurance, and remove or mitigate the source of stress or threat. This reduces the risk of aggressive behavior or emotional distress and maintains a positive and safe environment for the dog and their humans.
Proactive measures can be taken when we understand stress-related and displacement behaviors to provide comfort and support and create a safe and calm environment for our dogs. This improves the dog’s quality of life and strengthens the bond between the dog and their guardian by instilling trust, security, and emotional health.
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