Trigger Stacking in Dogs: From Stress to Success – What You Need to Know

Trigger stacking in dogs is a common but often misunderstood phenomenon. When multiple stressors accumulate, your dog’s ability to cope is compromised, leading to unpredictable and frantic behavior. In this post, discover all you need to know about trigger stacking in dogs, the signs, and how you can help your dog manage and prevent it effectively.

What Is Trigger Stacking?

Trigger stacking in dogs occurs when the dog experiences multiple stressors or triggers to a point of frantic behaviour or unpredictable behaviours such as biting and lunging.

Imagine your dog like a volcano, each trigger or stressor slowly heats the volcano and this keeps building up until the point of explosion.

Some dogs can deal with trigger stacking better due to having better self-regulation when it comes down to stress. These dogs will be resilient and more able to make better choices due to being able to process that stress in their everyday lives.

The dogs that will really struggle with trigger stacking are those that have issues with self-regulation. These will be the dogs that are labelled reactive, high energy, anxious, challenging etc.

Normally a lot of trigger stacking in dogs occurs outdoors on walks, however some dogs can experience stressors and triggers indoors as well.

Being unable to escape triggers and stress can lead to a chronic state of stress which can lead to behavioural issues and on a long enough scale other health issues too.

Common Triggers and Stressors

All dogs are different, just because something triggers or stresses one dog doesn’t mean that it can cause the same reaction with another dog.

Knowing what triggers and stresses your dog is highly recommended for general knowledge. This is something that will help when it comes to avoiding stress or if you struggle with reactive or over excitable dogs.

Below is a vague list of common triggers and stressors. See if any of these triggers your dog through observation. Try and see if you can get really specific e.g. if your dog doesn’t like people it may be men, it may be men in big coats.

• Dogs
• Postman
• Binman
• Bins
• Hoover’s
• Skateboards
• Bikes
• Cars
• Lorries
• Horses and livestock
• Strangers
• Prams
• Loud noises
• Children
• Smoke alarms
• Sirens
• Toaster
• Microwave

Symptoms of Trigger Stacking

It can be tricky to determine whether your dog’s behaviour is linked to trigger stacking, especially if you’re not closely monitoring their responses to stressors. The biggest clue is often a shift towards frantic or unpredictable behaviour. Trigger stacking gradually increases your dog’s stress level, eventually causing them to act erratically or unpredictably.

Restlessness is another key sign, as dogs under constant stress from accumulated triggers may struggle to relax. If you’ve noticed your dog never relaxes or seems constantly on edge, it may be a sign of underlying stress that’s building up over time. You can learn more about managing a restless dog here.

Along with restlessness, you’ll often notice symptoms like:

• Issues settling down
• Shortness of breath
• Unexpected growling
• Barking and lunging
• Tense body language
• OCD behaviours
• Frantic behaviours
• Pulling on leash
• Reactive behaviours
• Destructive behaviours

Recognizing Early Warning Signs of Trigger Stacking

It’s not always easy to catch trigger stacking before it spirals into full-blown reactivity, but recognizing the early warning signs can make a world of difference. Paying attention to subtle changes in your dog’s behaviour, like tension in their body or moments of restlessness, can help you step in before things escalate. If you’ve ever noticed your dog becoming increasingly restless, pacing, or unable to relax, that’s often an early sign of stress building up.

In fact, one of the most overlooked symptoms of stress and trigger stacking is restlessness. A dog that never relaxes may be struggling with high levels of stress due to ongoing triggers they’re dealing with throughout the day. To better understand how restlessness ties into stress, check out my blog post on why your dog never relaxes. There, I break down common causes of restlessness and how to tackle it.

Building a strong foundation of socialization and neutrality can also help prevent trigger stacking. Teaching your dog to stay calm and neutral around other dogs or stressful situations plays a critical role in avoiding stress buildup. For more on this, you can read my blog post on training your dog to ignore other dogs, which includes tips on fostering neutrality in distracting environments. You can also check out my post on how to socialize a reactive dog to help you understand and learn the importance of socialisation.

Lastly, managing stress before it stacks up requires daily decompression activities to help your dog release pent-up energy in a healthy way. If you’re curious about how to incorporate decompression into your routine and reduce overall stress levels, check out my post on stress detox for dogs. Implementing strategies like these can help prevent trigger stacking and promote long-term emotional balance for your dog. You can also look at activities such as scatter feeding for dogs and also sniffari dog walks which are great for decompression!

Trigger Stacking Vs Behavioural Issues

As you can see from above, a lot of behavioural issues can be mistaken with trigger stacking.

Now this doesn’t mean your dog’s reactivity is caused by trigger stacking, but it can certainly influence and exacerbate it.

A lot of behavioural issues can certainly stem from stress, especially stress on a long line. Stress increases frustration, makes it harder to make good choices, think clearly and more.

Many dogs find themselves in a stressed state, make the wrong choice and discover the joys of unwanted behaviours. Due to staying in this stressed state of mind and the reward, whether through dopamine or reinforcement, these tend to stick around and develop.

It’s surprising how many dogs actually become easier to train, work with and even see some of their behavioural issues becoming extinct when working on reducing their stress through mental stimulation or a stress detox.

5 Ways To Navigate Your Dog Through Trigger Stacking

As mentioned previously, some dogs are lucky enough to encounter their triggers or go through a stressful experience and just shake it off.

Other dogs that struggle with self regulation will need a hand when it comes to navigating trigger stacking.

There are a few things we can do to help our dogs with self regulation…

#1 – Promote Calm and Relaxed Behaviour

When dogs get stressed or hyper aroused it’s common for owners to pick up this behaviour as well. Our energy ends up matching our dogs and this actually causes more stress in the situation.

Energy is very important when it comes to dogs and our relationship with them. When our dogs get frustrated and stressed it’s up to us to be the calm and collected leader instead of a frustrated Freddie!

If your dog starts getting frantic or is struggling after a stressful experience then acting frustrated in turn will only make things worse.

#2 – Control The Environment

A thing many owners don’t realise is our ability to control the environment.

If you have a dog that’s in a stressed state of mind then you can avoid environments that may contain stressors or cause stress.

Ensuring an environment is calm and with no little distraction can be very beneficial when it comes to reducing stress and trigger stacking in dogs.

#3 – Get The Body Moving

Movement is great for instant stress and anxiety relief just like exercise.

Teachung your dog to follow a hand target, play treat chase, scatter feeding etc are all great options to get your dog moving.

Movement doesn’t have to be high intense, in fact, this will probably be worse. You want calm movement and want to keep arousal levels low.

#4 – Decompression Activities

These are activities that have been designed to reduce arousal and stress levels.

Having a few activities that you can do indoors and outdoors can be very beneficial to helping a dog with regulation.

Scatter feeding for dogs is a great decompression activity for both indoor and outdoor.

Sniffari dog walks are also a great activity for decompression.

#5 – Set Boundaries

You’ll be surprised how easy it can be to reduce your dogs stress levels just by setting some simple boundaries.

If your dog struggles to settle when they’re in a stressed state then it may be up to create a calm environment for them and reduce their movements so they can relax.

5 Tips for Preventing Trigger Stacking

#1 – Daily Decompression

Providing your dog with the opportunity for daily decompression can be very powerful when it comes to dogs with high stress and frustration levels.

Activities such as scatter feeding for dogs can provide numerous benefits along with being able to bring that stress level down.

#2 – Adequate Rest

Ensuring your dog gets enough rest is crucial to reducing stress levels. Adequate good and deep sleep is the gateway to eliminating stress from the body.

Even if a dog settles to struggle it is your responsibility to help them even if it means giving a time out, putting them in a more calm environment or even putting them in a secluded area.

#3 – Socialisation/Neutrality

Ensuring that you expose your dog to new environments, sounds and experiences is critical in their development.

Neutrality is such an important skill that I believe al dogs should possess – the ability to be in the same environmental space as other dogs or people and not really be bothered.

This may sound tricky to achieve but by socialising and going to different environments and just watching everything from a distance is your first step to neutrality.

#4 – Mental Stimulation

Mental stimulation is great for when dogs are stressed. Most mental stimulation is based on an activity, this activity gives the dog a purpose.

Having a purpose for a certain period of time can be very beneficial. With the right activity in your arsenal you can work on reducing stress form trigger stacking.

Mental stimulation tasks can burn a lot of mental energy and pent up energy to figure out and process.

#5 – Adequate Exercise

Ensuring our dogs get proper daily and adequate exercise is essential when it comes to reducing and eliminating stress.

I can guarantee there is a correlation between levels of exercise and behavioural issues. Dogs lacking in this department will have pent up energy and find outlet through unwanted and frustrated behaviours.

A lot of dogs get their daily exercise through walking which unfortunately for some just isn’t enough regardless of how far you walk or how much you let a dog sniff.

Physical exercise should really get the body moving, blood flowing and you should be able to see a physical change in your dog’s demeanour.

Stress Detox

Something you can do that is perfect for eliminating stress from both you and your dog is going on a stress detox.

A stress detox basically involves deconstructing a dogs day for a period of time. During this time you will be removing/avoiding stress and triggers from a dog’s day and focus on meeting a dogs needs and proper rest.

The goal is to slowly reduce stress levels until they can achieve proper rest and relaxation.

A major factor in the stress detox is to make observations on your dogs behaviour including things that stress them out and get them over aroused.

Completing a stress detox will allow owners to understand the sort of things and activities that stress and trigger their dog.

Once stress levels have disappeared or become a lot more manageable then it is possible to start focusing on introducing activities such as walks or battling issues such as reactivity.

You can download my FREE 5 day stress detox to start combating stress levels today!

Final Thoughts

Trigger stacking in dogs is a very problematic phenomenon that can be very influential to a dogs behaviour. It can lead to behavioural issues, unwanted behaviours and unpredictable reactions.

If you have a dog that struggles with self regulation when it comes to stress then understanding the information in this post can help empower both you and your dog to navigate through trigger stacking.

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