How Your Stress Impacts Your Reactive Dog: What Science Says About the Dog-Human Bond

In Sync: How Your Dog Mirrors Your Emotions

When you share your life with a reactive dog, you understand the heightened emotions that come along with it - both yours and your dogs. Although all dedicated dog parents have an unbreakable bond with their dog and know there's an emotional exchange to living together, reactive dog parents deal with far more fear and anxiety from their dog than most.

As someone who has struggled with - at times - crippling anxiety since childhood, I know what an impact it has on your life. What I didn't know when I got my first dog was the impact my emotions would have on his life.

Ever notice, when you come home from a tough day at work, your dog seems extra edgy? Then you have a day where you're feeling calm and grounded and "poof," walks go smooth. Hmmm...? It’s not your imagination, your emotions directly affect your dog's emotions and consequently, their behavior. Both my dogs were highly reactive and I could see on the days I let the stress of parenting them get to me, their reactive behavior was worse!

Moving beyond anecdotal evidence, research from veterinary behaviorist Dr. Zenithson Ng reveals just how deeply connected we are to our dogs emotionally and physiologically, especially when a dog is reactive.

Understanding this connection helps you support your dog in powerful new ways.

Your Stress Is Their Stress - Literally: Dr. Ng's research shows how strong and complex the dog-human bond is:

🐾 Synchronized Heartbeats & Breathing: Heart rate variability (HRV) in dogs and their people can sync up - particularly with female dogs. When you feel stressed, your dog's physiology can actually change to match your emotional state.

🐾 Even our most basic functions - like breathing - have been shown to synchronize. This is especially true when you and your dog are resting together which can contribute to better rest, something much needed by both reactive dogs and their people.

Other studies suggest that women (but not men) in the U.S. who sleep with their dog experienced better sleep than women who sleep with other creatures (aka: cats or men - no offense!) in part because dogs were less disruptive and provided comfort and security, but synchronized breathing is likely also a factor.

🐾 Before I share how your scent changes your dog's emotional state, I want to stress (no pun intended😄) just how amazingly well dogs can smell because it's mind bogglingly better than humans. Depending on the study/dog breed (some dogs, like Bloodhounds, are bred to be amazing sniffers), estimates say dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10 million times better than people! The average dog has 125 to 300 million olfactory receptors while humans have just 5 to 6 million. Plus, the part of dog brains devoted to analyzing scents is about 40X bigger than in humans.

To give you an example, dogs will detect scents at concentrations as low as one part per trillion! That's like one drop of something in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools.

When you get stressed out, your body releases a mix of stress chemicals such as cortisol & adrenaline into your bloodstream and your dog can smell them. That scent shifts your dog's focus entirely. For example, dogs exposed to the scent of a stressed person (even when the person was a stranger to them) were significantly less motivated to search for food. When you and your dog see a trigger during a walk, their emotional response and yours creates a stress loop that makes it difficult for your dog to learn. It also makes it hard for both of you to enjoy the walk. This is one of the reasons I recommend reactive dog parents learn calming techniques that help both them and their dog relax on walks.

🐾 Cortisol, known as the “stress hormone,” is found in both dogs and humans. In fact, cortisol presents similarly in the saliva and hair of both species, suggesting a Biochemical Bond between us, which means your stress is quite literally reflected in your dog’s body.

🐾 The news isn't all bad when it comes to your chemical bond with your dog because the biochemical bond works for you as well. Oxytocin, known as the "Love Hormone" or the "Feel Good Hormone" increases in both you and your dog when you look into each other's eyes. This bond supports trust, safety and emotional regulation.

What This Means for Reactive Dogs

Reactive dogs are regular dogs who experience higher levels of fear and anxiety due to a variety of reasons. The chemical bond between you and your dog is a bit of a double-edged sword: your dog mirrors your anxiety when you're stressed, but also your calm when you’re relaxed.

Rather than blame yourself (that's not what this is about), focus on learning simple techniques to keep both you and your dog calm - or return to calm after seeing a trigger. Dr. Ng's research is good news because it gives you an opportunity to directly impact how your dog feels simply by helping yourself to feel good. Rather than feel guilty that your stress makes your dog's behavior worse, feel empowered that you can focus on your own calm feelings to help them.

A simple way to start having more control over your emotions is to notice your thoughts. Over the course of an hour of dog walking, the average person has around 2,100 to 2,880 thoughts. I know from experience walking my reactive dogs those thoughts are often about fear of seeing triggers, what will go wrong, what will I do, etc. As Buddha said, "What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create." That means the thoughts you think cause the feelings you feel. Think about all the triggers showing up at once and you'll feel stressed, but if instead you think the walk will go smoothly and even if it doesn't you have the tools and knowledge to deal with any situation, you'll be able to remain calm.

I was certified as a life coach many years ago and the focus on how managing thoughts change our results remains one of the most impactful practices I learned.

The reason your thoughts have power is because they create your emotions which, as outlined above, alter your body's chemicals affecting your dog while the thoughts - whether positive or negative affect your behavior. For example: let's say you have to make a phone call and you don't expect it to go well. You'll show up for that call with different energy than you would if you expected a positive outcome.

When you feel negative, you approach the call more aggressively, putting off the other person and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of the call going poorly. When you approach the call from a positive perspective, you're more open to what the other person has to say and more creative in your approach. Studies show that something as simple as smiling while on the phone increases the probability of a positive outcome even though the other person can't see you smiling. The act of smiling changes your energy.

I've seen for myself working with clients over the past decade that this same concept applied to your reactive dog increases training success.

You have more power than you think! Your emotional regulation, routines and mindset are powerful training tools. Use the loving bond you have with your dog to help them move past fear and enjoy walks with you.

How to Use Your Bond to Support Your Dog

Try these simple ways to turn your bond into a strength:

• Create rituals that calm you both. Practice deep breathing or grounding exercises together before or during breaks on your walks.

  
  

• Use an upbeat tone of voice. Dogs respond to tone of voice more than words. A soft, relaxed voice can change the energy. Use "baby talk" to help both of you stay calm.

  
  

• Try positive touch. Petting your dog can lower your blood pressure and soothe their nervous system at the same time. Petting behind their ears can be especially calming.

  
  

• Visualize your walks going well. As with the phone call example above, picturing something going well before you start supports positive outcomes.

  
  

• Have compassion for both of you. Reactive dogs are great dogs. They're just sensitive and need to learn new coping skills. Learn together to manage your thoughts and energy for a better life.

Not sure where to start?

I am passionate about supporting reactive dogs and the people who love them. Take my free course to learn simple calming techniques you can use anywhere. Parenting a reactive dog is no walk in the park (I think I'm so funny😂). Whether you’re navigating leash reactivity, barking or the emotional ups and downs that come with it, I’ve been there and I see you.