Blog — Alternative Medicine for Dogs

Many people throw this term “leash reactivity” around for the purpose of giving their dog a diagnosis, but what does it really mean? Firstly, your dog is displaying some sort of unwanted behaviors while being restrained on a leash. The “symptoms” of leash reactivity can be: barking, growling, lunging, biting, and even redirecting on the handler. Typically, this is in response to a “trigger” but it could simply be a stimulus that arouses your dog’s drive. So we have a stimulus and a response, but what is the underlying process? It’s different for different dogs, so let’s break it down....

Expressing Sympathetic Arousal with Resistance Feeding and Tug-of-War “In the intensity of sympathetic mobilization your clients are looking for an organized way to use and safely discharge their energy. “    --Deb Dana, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection   Resistance Feeding:   Allows the dog to express the “surge” of energy resulting from sympathetic arousal Dog pushes into the handler to discharge sympathetic energy of fight/flight/hunt Constructive way to channel fear, reactivity, fight drive, and even hunting instincts       Tug-of-War:   Uses the dog’s natural instinct to bite in a playful way that regulates the dog and...

  If you have an anxious or overstimulated dog: Remember... Talk Without Touch is overstimulating, confusing, and activates the sympathetic nervous system. However... Touch Without Talk can soothe an overactive mind. Petting is just petting, and often done in a mindless way, or worse, in a way that satisfies the owner's need to be validated and soothed. If you want to truly start to heal your dog and the connection you have with yourself and your own nervous system, first: Get quiet. Set an intention. Know that this will be healing for both you and your dog if you go...

  Enrichment has been trending in the dog training for quite some time now, but do you know WHY it's actually so important? It's not just about providing your dog with puzzles and distractions to drain their energy. Environmental enrichment that provides breed-specific biological fulfillment actually changes your dog's brain! It makes your dog's brain more flexible and open to learning.   This is ESPECIALLY important for behavior modification because we need your dog's brain to grow new neural pathways so they can learn and actively choose new behaviors. So while it may make sense for a short time to...

  Sniffing, licking, and chewing are all soothing to a dog. Scatter feeding, snuffle mats, and chews are all essential in our repertoire of enrichment activities. But you know what else is extremely satisfying and regulating to dogs? Biting, tugging, kill-shaking, and dissecting. If we want to look at the predatory sequence, we must honor the dog as an actual predator. Predators spend a lot of energy hunting, seeking, searching, and eye-stalking their prey. They then chase, catch, and kill. THEN they dissect and ingest. If you are missing any of these activities, then it's possible that your dog is...