Sunny Weber

Beyond Flight or Fight: A Compassionate Guide for Working with Fearful Dogs

By Sunny Weber

Chapter One: What Is Fear?

Charles Darwin—explorer, wildlife illustrator, creator of the theory of evolution, and one of the first to study animal behavior—cited six primary emotions in “higher brained” creatures. He defined higher brained creatures as “animals that have an incipient capacity for empathy, logic, language and magnanimity.” The six primary emotions he defined were: happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.

Dogs fulfill all of Darwin’s descriptions of higher brained creatures, and they will be our focus in this book. Sensitive, intelligent, and intensely aware of their surroundings, dogs experience all of Darwin’s primary emotions.

There is no mistaking the appearance of a happy dog inviting us to play or come close: relaxed, wiggly body; tail wagging madly; tongue lolling; often emitting a variety of vocalizations. Surprised dogs may startle, then respond with barking, whining, and attempts to either engage for comfort or run away in apprehension. Often a surprised dog will return to investigate the stimulus that caused its surprise.

It is easy to spot a sad dog too: raised eyebrows, drooping ears, slumped postures, and mournful eyes. Anger usually manifests in various forms of aggression, which can result from threatened loss of a valued resource or the instinct to protect home, family, or self. Physical anger can manifest in piloerection, a stiff stance, lifted lips, wrinkled nose, squinting eyes, bared teeth, and deep vocalizations. These are canine facial and body movements that humans instinctively find threatening.

Disgust in dogs is more difficult to interpret. Psychologist Abraham Maslow stated in an article in 1932 that dogs he tested rejected raw dog flesh when it was placed before them as a meal. They turned their faces away from the bowls, averted eye contact, and slowly slunk away. No kidding!

Fear in dogs is a major reason that dogs are surrendered to shelters, rescues, and sanctuaries. Fears believed to be unworkable result in more rejection of dogs as pets than aggression, although certain types of aggression are caused by fear. If we can learn more about all the aspects of what makes dogs afraid, we can help them face stimuli that frighten them and create adoptable dogs from rejected misfits.

We will examine every aspect of fear that I have come across in twenty-five years of rehabilitating fearful dogs. My goal is to help you—a confused and well-meaning owner or professional dog handler—address the behavior in dogs that causes them turmoil. Our mutual goal is to help them find comfort and homes.

What did Darwin have to say about fear? What are primitive fear reactions in dogs? What are reasoned dog responses to fear? How do these reactions apply to our relationships with our dogs? How does fear start? What happens as fear takes over the dog’s brain and body? How does fear determine the way a dog acts? Let us start at the beginning: how fear works.

Fear as a Primary Emotion

Emotions are based in the primitive limbic areas of a dog’s brain, deep in the amygdala section. Primary emotions such as fear are automatic and require no rational thinking to cause physiological and psychological reactions. Fear results from exposure to any stimulus (object or situation) that is perceived by the brain as a threat to survival. The immediate rush of the stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) sets off the rapid and instant reflexive responses Darwin coined, “fight or flight.” In a dog, these hormones trigger instantaneous readiness to save himself from a harmful scenario and quickly seek and find physical—and therefore emotional—safety. There are two ways a dog can save himself from danger: to engage in aggression to protect himself (fight) or to run away (flight). Most dogs prefer to run than to fight, so I have changed the order of Darwin’s theory to “flight or fight.”

For example, when a dog is startled by an unrecognized sound, such as clanging pots, a dropped book, or a backfiring car, he may break into a panicked run to escape. His instinct of flight engages before the dog has a chance to reason and understand that a pot, book, or backfire pose no imminent real threat to his survival. Another example would be when a dog is held tight for an inoculation at the veterinarian’s office. Restraint by a person the dog does not know could result in the struggle for freedom that, if not granted, could escalate into an aggressive fight to escape.

Dogs are predator animals. They evolved primarily for fight, not flight, as prey animals, such as horses, did. Human intervention in breeding, especially in dogs, now limits the use of flight. Some breeds are bred for short legs or small stature, which would severely compromise their survival in Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” natural world. In Darwin’s nineteenth century concept, his principle of natural selection postulated that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit. Complex human interference through selected breeding sped up the development of physical characteristics that have created dogs “unfit” for survival in the natural world, therefore necessitating our care and protection.

Other physical characteristics have combined to limit the safety of dogs in the wild world. A dog’s eyes are in the front of his head, which limits vision and renders him vulnerable to attack from over or behind his head and back. The dog’s peripheral vision can also be limited, depending on breed structure and grooming trends. However, dogs are capable of an intense gaze wherever their faces point which, when combined with their other superior senses of smell and hearing, form a compilation of sensory input to their brains. That input can trigger a response according to the brain’s determination of what action is needed. That response may include further docile visual, auditory, and olfactory monitoring of a questionable stimulus. If intense fear is triggered, the response could result in the dog’s behavior escalating into fight instinct. The dog’s instinct is to eliminate the stimulus by threatening to fight. But after centuries of domestication, most dogs choose to run away first.

Although dogs can often trot great distances, flat-out long-distance escape running is not what they are designed for (except breeds like greyhounds). Flight is possible in medium-length spurts only. After thousands of years of dependence on people, dogs are no longer in need of long-distance running to wear down prey in a pack hunt. They are rarely aerobically fit for long runs. Dogs that are ill-equipped physically or cognitively to face and fight a stimulus they feel is a threat will still attempt to escape.

But sometimes escape is not possible. What then? When undeveloped aerobic conditioning, genetic timidity, lack of socialization, little exposure to novel lifestyles, or hardwired breeding for high reactivity combine with inability to escape, fear aggression evolves. In the fear-aggressive dog’s mind, the best defense is an offense in the form of a forward, fast, and frightening display of teeth, growls, and bite threats. The startled foe halts forward threatening motion. Once the threat is neutralized in movement, the fearful dog can run away or find a place to hide.

Limbic fear can result in an astonishingly rapid transformation from avoidance behavior to attack action. People often feel sorry for a fearful, shy dog and approach to comfort him. When the dog first cowers and then flies into an unexpected attack, well-meaning people freeze in surprise, and the dog sees his chance to get away. If the timid dog has no escape and is restrained or trapped, true aggression can result with injuries to anyone around him. Fear aggression can occur even in a well-socialized dog who, in his own interpretation of the scenario, has no alternative.

Dogs that have wider experience and/or bolder natural temperaments will seek flight less often and may choose to directly face a threat. If so, they might show several warning signs before actual bite contact. These warnings could include freezing (immediate cessation of movement to not appear as prey), lip curling, nose wrinkling, squinted eyes with the whites showing, flattened ears, head turned away, piloerection, stiff body, and successively louder growls. The tail may wag stiffly or not at all. Biting the air, known as an “air snap,” is a serious warning. If these signals are ignored or go unobserved, defense contact bites follow and can lead to injury.

Regardless of an individual dog’s methods for dealing with fearful situations, limbic brain function is instinctual, rapid, and reflexive—not reasoned through. Flight and/or fight are survival tools. They are primary emotional spurts of panic, supplied by the energy provided by the stress hormones that race through minds and muscles.

Fear as a Secondary Emotion

According to Darwin, when fear manifests as a secondary emotion, conscious thought is processed in the cerebral cortex where higher logic dominates reaction. A well-socialized, confident, and trained dog will allow proximity of a novel sight, sound, or object, although all primitive logic has taught him to fear and escape the unknown. A dog who trusts his handler and is accustomed to tolerating new experiences will overrule his amygdala’s limbic messages and bypass emotion to the cerebral cortex. New studies continue to show that dogs are able to reason on complex levels of choice—cognitive aspects that were not known during Darwin’s time.

We can help a dog learn how to tap in to his cerebral cortex reasoning by socializing him as a youngster. The vital time for laying the groundwork of building tolerance for novelty is within the first twelve weeks of a puppy’s life. Exposing the puppy to a large variety of new stimuli in non-traumatic ways during this peak time of brain development will prepare him to accept new stimuli when he is older.

During those first twelve weeks, the puppy has not yet learned to be afraid. Following that time, as with human children, the puppy will go through fear stages—weeks of extreme sensitivity to things he has not seen or experienced before. The fear stage weeks vary according to breed size and rate of maturity. Sensitive exposures to new experiences, scents, sights, people, and other animals should be part of every puppy’s socialization to the world he will inhabit as an adult dog. The puppy will learn to trust his leader (you) and other people during this time. Your reliable and consistent guidance through his fear stages will reap huge paybacks when the dog matures.

A dog that has been raised from puppyhood to trust human handling will not bite the first time a person hurts him. He will tolerate pain, inoculations, and other invasions of his body because he has learned to trust. Although pain-induced fear aggression is a common problem in dogs, it can be avoided when a dog is socialized and handled properly early, and for the majority of his life.

If the first twelve weeks of socialization are missed or mishandled, you will have a difficult, if not impossible, time helping an older fearful dog catch up. An older dog that is hardwired (genetically predisposed) to be reactive and sensitive to novel experiences, such as pain, will be more of a challenge. It will take longer to assist him in the development of cerebral cortex reasoning. Behavior modification programs will have to be developed and implemented slowly to help desensitize the mature dog to fearful and/or novel stimuli.

If a dog has a conditioned fear response based on previous negative experiences, skilled behavior modification will help the dog replace his conditioned fear response with more reasoned tolerance to what was once frightening. The younger the fearful pup is when behavior modification begins, the better. Also, the smaller the fright the pet experienced when he first learned to fear, the faster and more completely he will habituate to that same stimulus. A program of habituation and desensitization will move forward more slowly and may result in less success when the dog is older and/or the fear is more intense.

Sometimes fears can be lessened but not completely eliminated. But helping a mature dog learn to think through fear is possible. In this way, fear can be managed, even if it is not eliminated.

Dogs can be taught to think before they act. A dog’s behavior can become flexible and his reactions variable, as the dog reasons through his predicament. The challenge in working with a fearful dog is to build trust between him and you and to allow the time for trust to override the strength of survival instincts that remain in all dogs.

Teaching a dog coping skills is a complex process but worth the effort. A dog who accomplishes such change in behavior will feel empowered by the support he receives from you, and he will gain self-confidence in judging his environment. With time, the dog will calm himself, learn to investigate feared stimuli, and determine whether any, or how much, reaction is needed for perceived survival.

When fearful dogs are successful in transferring themselves from primitive reactions to reasoned and controlled responses, they become more adaptable and therefore, more adoptable. Rehabilitators of fearful dogs are capable of saving dog lives and can take pride in the realization that the dog’s life will not only be saved, but that life will be more comfortable, peaceful, and rich.

Chapter Two

Rescued! Now What?

When a dog finds herself alone in the world with no one to protect and guide her, life can be a mass of overwhelming chaos. Dogs who are abandoned, isolated, or ignored face psychological trauma that can be worse than physical trauma. If they are lucky, these rejected dogs may end up in a rescue organization where they are cared about. From there, these wayward dogs have possibilities for adoptions and promising futures, or at least safe havens where their physical and emotional needs are provided for.

The Structures of Rescue Organizations

Dogs may become homeless when they are voluntarily relinquished by their owners, become lost or abandoned, or are rescued from undesirable situations. There are four primary structures to the organizations that will accept homeless dogs: the rescue, the shelter, the municipal pound, and the sanctuary.

Rescues

Rescues are usually small, privately owned, loosely operated groups of people who share a specific common interest. For example, there are breed-specific dog rescues, cat, bird, and horse rescues. Most do not own physical structures or buildings, with the exception of horse rescues. Most rescues depend on volunteers to foster pets in their own homes until they are adopted. Some rescues receive funding from nongovernmental organizations and/or individuals. They may have regulatory 501(c)(3) designations, which makes donations to them tax deductible to the giver. Many do not have this designation and depend on volunteers to give money as well as time. Few euthanize except when dogs have extreme aggression or health issues.

Shelters

Shelters have their own buildings, almost always have 501(c)(3) designations as nonprofit organizations, and use paid staff as well as volunteers. They are usually larger than rescues and most often, they are incorporated and governed by a board of directors. They may take specific species or many species.

Like rescues, shelters hope to adopt out their animals, but too often, they must euthanize some of them because they lack funding for resources and/or space. These shelters are known as “kill” or “open-admission” shelters. They will accept any homeless animal because there is rotation in space due to euthanasia and adoption. There are “no-kill” shelters, but they are “closed-admission” facilities. They only euthanize animals with extreme health issues, which sometimes results in their inability to accept all needy pets due to lack of space and resources. With ongoing progress in the animal welfare world, there are a handful of open admission shelters that obtain such high adoption rates that they reach a no-kill level of operation.

City or Municipal Pounds

City or municipal pounds are funded by those governmental entities and take in lost and found pets, pets confiscated by animal control officers for illegal cruelty, neglect, and/or abuse, and voluntary owner relinquishments. They are open admission, but pets have finite amounts of time in these facilities. Until recently, pounds were not concerned with adoption. They simply served as a holding facility for lost animals until their owners claimed them, which, unfortunately, was a rare occurrence. At the end of the time assigned, they were euthanized to make room for incoming animals. In larger urban areas, city pounds now often transfer the most adoptable unclaimed pets to private shelters, giving them additional time for staff to find placement homes.

Sanctuaries

Sanctuaries are private or public nonprofits governed by boards of directors and funded by tax-deductible donations. They take in and keep pets for the duration of their lives, regardless of adoptability, health, or behavioral issues. Because sanctuaries receive many unadoptable pets, the ensuing expenses can be high, especially if pets are elderly, ill, or require special facilities for safekeeping (as in court-ordered aggression cases). They will engage in humane euthanasia when the established criterion for quality of life is breached. Sanctuaries are expensive to run and are the least numerous and most short-lived of all the rescue organizations.

The animal welfare profession has increased animal cognitive and emotional research. This has resulted in greater awareness of the necessity for enrichment in captive environments and in animals’ relationships with handlers in those environments. Consequently, many rescues, shelters, and sanctuaries have made efforts to provide mental and physical stimulation for animals in their care. They also seek to develop relationships between caregivers and their animals.

The Case for Relationship Building with Fearful Homeless Dogs

To their credit, more rescue organizations are developing and incorporating programs that address fear and insecurity in the dogs they provide safe haven for. They seek to take the edge off minor fears caused by new environments with new companions and they strive to help dogs settle in to their temporary homes at the facility. Unfortunately, these programs meet with mixed success.