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Okay, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you but dogs actually know how to sit without us training them to do that. But they use it meaningfully and often as a way to communicate with us and other animals.
Now with reactive or barkey-lungey dogs, one of the scenarios in which SIT is taught to them is when they encounter other dogs or their triggers on a walk. These triggers could be dogs, children, cats or anything else that's likely to "set the dog off".
Image source: Google Images
The assumption is:
if we teach our dogs to sit in a situation like this, they are less likely to lunge at other dogs and through this, will learn some level of self-control.
But this is a false assumption. Let me tell you why:
When a dog sees something they perceive as danger, their body naturally goes into a fight or flight mode or what it also called survival mode.
This is the body’s way of coping with what they perceive as danger and is an involuntary response. In this fight or flight mode, dogs experience a bunch of physiological changes that they have no control over like increase in heart rate, pupil dilation, secretion of specific hormones. One of the involuntary changes they also experience is a rush of energy (this is the adrenaline inside the body at work) that causes them to 'move'. Because when you are in a fight or flight mode, your muscles need all the energy possible to fight or run away till the 'danger' subsides.
Forcing your dog to sit in situations that the dog perceive dangerous (like seeing or coming close to their trigger) actually overrides how the dog would naturally respond to a stressful situation and this can be even more frustrating for a dog. This is NOT to say that you should let your dogs bite any passing trigger - but first understand WHY they're having that reaction in the first place and recognise how it's actually serving them in that moment.
Now, if a dog wants to move away or ask for distance from the passing trigger but is instead made to sit, that is unwanted, poorly managed exposure to that trigger (also known as ‘flooding’).
Remember even in these stressful interactions, dogs are communicating with each other even if it's not the most effective communication. Your reactive dog might be using a host of calming signals and body cues to communicate with the trigger and sitting may not be one of them. Now by asking them to sit, we've actually taken over their full conversation and further messed up their interaction. Because remember while we know that dogs use sitting as a calming signal, we don't know when they choose to use it or what it specifically communicates to other dogs. We just know it's a calming signal!
It’s like making someone sit down when they are anxious/stressed when their way of coping might be to pace around. Remember if sitting works for someone who's feeling anxious it's because they are choosing to cope in that way - it's not because someone is forcing them to do it.
Not having the freedom to communicate the way one wants and being forced to watch a trigger or communicate something else entirely when every cell in their body is screaming to walk away or increase distance or even fight can lead to incredible helplessness or shut down behaviours that can be mistaken for calmness or self-control.
We shouldn't ignore that dogs have their own coping strategies. In stressful situations, dogs use communication like calming signals, distance creating signals, vocalisations and other non verbal communication to let other humans, dogs and animals know that they are feeling overwhelmed.
But what about using SIT to teach dogs about self-control?
Let's unpack this ⬇️
In a study done by Miller, DeWall et al, two groups of dogs were tested to understand which group exercised self-control.
One group of dogs was made to sit for 10 minutes (it’s important to note that researchers referred to this as ‘self-control depletion’) and another group was kept in a cage but free to roam.
They then had to enter a room where a growling, “aggressive” dog was also in a cage.
They found that dogs that were ‘depleted’ engaged in more risky behaviours like staying closer to the aggressive dog than dogs who were allowed to roam around in their cage.
It’s fair to then say that when that sense of self-control is depleted, decision making and judgement might also be negatively affected. And so much of self-control emerges for dogs when they actually have the freedom to from different coping strategies, are more emotionally regulated and feel safer in the world.
Even in these extremely tense, stressful situations, we have to think about how we can give our dogs some sense of agency because that lack of agency further exacerbates the stress they experience.
Instead, focusing on giving our dogs more choices and agency is more likely to help them assert self-control.
If you have a reactive dog and want to understand how you can give them more choices in these situations, book a 1:1 behaviour consultation and let's chat! The first step starts with a FREE discovery call that you can use to chat about your dog and know how I can support you both. Book your call here: https://calendly.com/luchiandmuttons/free-discovery-call
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