The three Cs. Pivotal, to understanding your dog's behaviour. So let's get started. If you imagine a diagram. Let's write 'cortisol' first and draw a bubble around it. Next let's put the other two words below it; 'canines' sitting to the right in a little bubble, and 'cavemen' over slightly to the left, in another bubble.
You can see from this, that cortisol has a link with both of these other Cs. And it all started with cavemen. Cavemen needed cortisol, like today we need dogs. Cortisol enabled us to stay alive, quite literally.
To some extent it still does this today. But nowadays, a little differently. For cavemen, cortisol ignited the second we saw or engaged with a physical threat. It was as it remains today, a stress response. Today, if we experience a physical threat we will again rely on cortisol. But as you all know this happens much less often. Thankfully cortisol is still around for other important work, like helping our bodies fight infection by creating inflammation in the body.
So, to dogs. What is the link? Well, dogs too adopt the same process and have the same history with this chemical. In the days when they faced physical threats, they needed it too. It helped them fight, or take flight. Either way it was the knight in shining armour that aided us and our dogs at these critical survival moments.
And now? Well, now it's different, for both humans and dogs. Having now developed over hundreds of years, our cortisol ignites at very different moments than before. There are rarely during physically life threatening moments. Instead, our cortisol response ignites when we face other threats. Often these are psychological in nature. We may be late for work, or having relationsip difficulties. Our dogs may also be stressed in terms of their relationships with us, or frustrated due to their instinctive needs not being met.
When this happens, both humans and dogs release cortisol. Unlike acute moments like a lion chase back in cavemen days, our stresses today are often more long term. This means cortisol stays high, and that's a new thing in historical terms. We all face challenges that we didn't before. When dogs lived alongside cavemen, they too hunted, foraged, slept and played. Nowadays they still need something similar, but because we've all done it for so long, we sometimes forget, they aren't built to sit in a brick house for nine hours each day while we all go and do something else.
This is along similar lines of fancy GQ articles these days, about human stress. You will likely know already, that on the flip side3 to triggering cortisol, our brains also respond in an instinctive way to active measures to destress. These include, moments of stillness, walks in forests, breathing to engage the calmer parts of your system and help switch off that stress response. Your dogs are no different, they need a god dose of this too.
So, we must remember, all of us that we have a responsibility to manage our own stress and that of our dogs. And you may well ask how we achieve this. Well, in the simplest of ways. Moments of stillness for you, provides moments of stillness for them. Instinctive needs can now be met by bringing our dogs back to the more instinctive behaviours that truly fulfil them. I'm talking about foraging in the grass for treats, licking lunch out of a Kong instead of a food bowl (food bowls waste an ideal opportunity for enrichment based eating instead). Hiding things for them to find. Use that nose in the way it was intended - finding things!
Get creative just as we have with our own stress. Goat yoga for humans? Okay, I see you. I'm doing vanilla scented hide and seek games today with my four legged daughter.
Whatever you do, make sure to follow me on socials for more fun and games and keep an eye out.... my product launch is coming soon and this will help you achieve exactly what I've described in today's article. I'm so excited!
Until next time.... :)
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