06/18/2025
Oh Jetta! 🖤
This was a hard few minutes for her. First time in this type of space, music was a little loud, so many smells, and the big kicker? Her human needed to walk out of sight for a few minutes! 😱
Jetta hasn't practiced any of this before! It was a bit too much for her. I took this video to highlight her body language and why I chose to just sit and not ask much of her while she processed. You can see she is panting pretty heavily, breathing rapidly, commisures in a wide C shape and tongue is long and lolling. It's not hot and we are not being active, so this tells me she's probably stressing. You can see her tail wag occasionally, there were other moments it was wagging steadily back and forth. This is not a happy wag. She's aroused (meaning heightened emotional state) and wagging her tail from the stress and uncertainty of what's happening. She's vigilant, staring, not able to look away from the mouth of the room.
She was very detached, not consistently interested in food, and when we tried to move around, she was instantly pulling hard on the leash. All our skills went out the window due to her emotional state!
Once her human came back (not gone forever, whew!) we only needed another couple minutes for Jetta to calm down and offer engagement, take food, play engage/disengage, and show significant improvement in that first space! We then moved to the opposite side of this area and you could see her escalating again, no longer engaging, distracted by smells, panting. But she processed the change MUCH faster the second time, and was back to offering engagement and attention within just a couple minutes!
We cannot bubble wrap our dogs and never let them feel any stress (within reason! I would never purposefully terrify a dog and call it training). It's important they can learn to work through it and realize there was nothing to worry about after all. It's also important for us humans to understand that during stress, our dogs' inability to follow our direction is not them being stubborn or purposefully ignoring us. They are not giving us a hard time, they are HAVING a hard time! Approach the situation with empathy and patience and help them come through it!
Excellent work, Team Jetta!
Brittni Hyzer CPDT-KA, FFCP, FDM
