19/10/2025
Hey everyone!
Cati here. Thanks for your patience and I hope that those of you reading this have my previous shared post in mind regarding the emotional side of training and how exercise is vastly different than what we make of it at surface level.
I would like to start off by saying that one of the easiest traps we fall prey to with training is that we project our own emotions onto the dog we are working with. (This is especially prevalent when it comes to the use of corrections and corrective training aids.) We are only capable of experiencing the world through our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Thus, projection and speculation tend to flavor and guide our choices. This particular idiosyncracy is one of our biggest downfalls for progressively helping others to their own benefit and not solely our own.
The second trap that we as humans tend to be so easily ensnared by is complacency. It is SO EASY to step away from forming new and beneficial habits, or enacting changes in our own behavior. Is this laziness? Possibly. Is it self preservation? Could be. Is it a trauma response? If you have experienced trauma, there's a chance it may be. Habits are the cornerstone of our behavior. They both help and harm us circumstantially. It is especially difficult to try and affect positive change when it requires copious amounts of effort, even if we know that we like the sound of the ending result.
So with that in mind, let's get back into talking about how exercise and emotions affect training.
I want to phrase this in a way that I hope you can understand because this concept that I am discussing has some nebulous aspects to it. We are all aware that our brain functions with electrical impulses (a form of energy) to communicate and carry out its purpose. So, we can thus reason that thoughts and emotions are the equivalent of energy. So when I am talking about literally anything that our body needs to do, it takes energy to do it. All sentient beings fall in line with this.
Anyone that ever works with a high energy dog understands that you absolutely MUST do something with all of that energy. This often leads to the first pitfall that humans cling to: you must physically exercise the dog or you will have no peace. Now... I was very deliberate in my wording of this pitfall. Physical exercise generates neurotransmitters/hormones such as endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, and glutamate. Naturally, those all lead to a feeling of improved mood, relieved stress, and increased energy levels. Please read that last sentence again and as many times as it takes to sink in. Remember how humans have a habit of being complacent? We have solved our energy problem by generating MORE energy over the long term.
Now let's very quickly look at what happens when the body is NOT getting that sustained influx of hormones at the levels it needs...
Lack of endorphins: increased pain sensitivity, mood swings, greater susceptibility to impulsive behavior and addiction.
Lack of serotonin: mood swings, anxiety, restlessness, affectations to sleep, appetite, and cognitive function.
Lack of dopamine: fatigue, lack of motivation, motor problems, mood swings.
Lack of epinephrine: mood swings, restlessness, affectations to sleep.
Lack of norepinephrine: mood swings, emotional withdrawal, difficulty coping with stress, fatigue.
Lack of glutamate: restlessness, difficulty concentrating, mood swings.
Not being able to keep up with the energy being generated now creates a different hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that prepares the body for fight or flight, increases alertness, raises blood sugar, and supresses the appetite.
Let me put a disclaimer here before I continue. Physical exercise is NECESSARY. It helps our body regulate hormones and neurotransmitters. However, as any therapist or scientist could tell you, physical exercise is not the same thing as, nor is it a replacement for learning emotional regulation or critical thinking. There is not a being alive that benefits from exercise alone to deal with all of the energy the body creates because a vast quantity of the energy being created is emotional in nature. This is where the development of coping skills and emotional regulation are necessary.
I often encounter "adrenaline junkies" in the dogs I meet with behavioral problems. Dogs that need it NOW. Dogs that will stop at nothing to get what they think their body needs. And they have oftentimes learned that the act of misbehavior is rewarded with all the goods. Why behave if misbehavior gets the same reward faster? Guess what happens with these dogs when you have to start teaching them how to manage their emotions and energy through the mind and not through the body... they act out. They become stressed. They go through what a human could easily equate with withdrawal. This visceral response leads humans to often go back to our first trap... projecting with their own emotions. The human is no longer at peace. This conundrum is one that some of you who have been through therapy may be more familiar with. This is often where we see the development of maladaptive coping mechanisms. (Coping mechanisms that are the equivalent of putting a bandage on an infected cut.) Things like increasing the amount of exercise or rehoming the dog somewhere it has room to run free, because the dog is suffering. Meanwhile, the actual development of appropriate coping mechanisms remains unmet.
Remember the toddler emotional cap of the dog's development? This means oftentimes explosive outbursts of emotion. They are monumentally difficult to deal with when you add in the mental cap of a teenager using opportunistic predation to get their way. These behaviors oftentimes are the reason people seek out trainers like Heather and I.
This area of training is so uncomfortable because it forces us to look at the emotions of two individuals (handler and dog) head on and learn how to adapt the habits of both. True peace cannot be achieved if it is only the handler's temporarily. Because ultimately the dog suffers. If only the dog's needs are satisfied and the handler is just left tired, upset, and increasingly frustrated, we have a cycle that just viciously repeats itself. We as humans have to accept that there is discomfort in emotional growth. If we avoid discomfort at all costs for one or both individuals, we create a more chaotic emotional mess to sort through. Starting new habits, making profound changes, not rising to the bait of impulse and demand. All of these require, cultivate, and test your patience. The more patience you strive to have, the easier they become.
I feel that this is a good stopping point to check in and see what each of you has gained or related to from this post?
