Over excitement and how to deal with it

Different hobbies that require lots of energy and high drive have increased in popularity. This has led to some breeds being very hyper, aiming to produce top dogs for those certain hobbies that require exploding action. Unfortunately this also leads to certain problems with dogs of these breeds that end up just pets. How to deal with hyper breeds and/or hyper dogs, so that everyone can enjoy their life equally?
​

I recently had a client that owns a born deaf young boxer bitch. The dog was friendly and happy, but the client said she had continuous problems with the dog’s high energy. The dog was unable to sleep at night, it had a habit of running from window to window constantly and it kept on breaking stuff and stealing garbage bags and food when the client or her family was not home. The client said they were hoping to have another pup, but she was afraid the over the top behavior of their previous dog would pass on to the pup.

There are certain triggers I search for when listening to a case. In this particular case there were many trigger words; doesn’t sleep, barks at windows, young, deaf, boxer. I asked some more and learned the family was very active. They had their dog with them in many great activities, and when they felt the dog was bored, they came up with new plays and exercises. In other words, they were super owners, trying everything in their power to make their dog happy and answer to it’s growing need of exercise.

In cases like this many people, me in the past included, fall in the trap of ”trying more”. The dog seems bored, we give it more to do. The dog seems bored still, we will give it EVEN MORE to do. This goes on and on, until it feels like there is nothing in life but trying to tire the pupper down, and it just DOES. NOT. CALM. DOWN.

Of course it does not. In the past, when I learnt the truth, I was hesitant and doubtful at first. There I was, with an active dog, and I was told the real way to deal with the situation is to NOT do so much with the dog. What? Indeed; the right way to help a hyper, active dog is to give it enough exercise and teach it to calm down.

Stress Hormone

Hyper dogs tend to get stressed. Continuously building up one’s tension and being alert affects sleeping routines and just general ability to chill every once in a while. Often, when these dogs are then exercised even more by their owners, their stress level increase until physical symptoms start. Most common is weight loss; hyper dogs are often very skinny. They can also develop digestion problems, even rash or cause injuries to themselves when breaking stuff and eating things they shouldn’t.

The physical injuries caused by the dog itself are nasty, but visible. The REAL enemy to a stressed, hyper dog is a hormone called cortisole.

Cortisole, often called stress hormone, can have long lasting effects in the body. It can affect everything from immune system to mental stability. It can ever cause harm in cellural level, making it important to reduce long lasting stress at all causes. Since it is a hormone, once it is released, it will be there. Cortisole has it’s benefits, too, and every animal needs certain amount of cortisole. It is the increased, long lasting effect that turns cortisole from a friend to an enemy.

Lowering the amounts of cortisole in dog’s body is essential in the process of rehabilitating. Increased amounts of cortisole have been suggested to have a negative effect in learning, and that’s why results don’t happen in the first days. It is important to carry on, because the first real results start to be visible in a week or two.

What is enough exercise?

The amount of needed exercise depends on the dog, but it is pretty safe to assume most dogs should be happy with two hours of exercise a day. This does not mean the dog sleeps the rest of the day, but for a normal pet dog two hours of exercise should be enough for a regular day. Some dogs might need less, especially after their stress levels decrease and they learn to take things easy. Also keep in mind that certain breeds may require certain types of exercise. You need to know the needs of your breed / breed mix in order to answer to them

Some breeds are, unfortunately, often bred towards hyper activity. This is common in breeds that are hoped to compete in hobbies that require exploding reactions and high drive. While it is important that dogs in these hobbies HAVE that drive, breeding hyper activity is breeding unhealthy temperament. Even so, even the best specimen of certain active breeds can have a tendency to become hyper active if their ever growing will to exercise is always answered and topped, time after time. This is exactly what happens with many hyper young dogs. They enjoy exercise, so their responsible owners try to answer to their need for speed. This, in return, raises the demands even higher.

How hyper dogs SHOULD be exercised?

Hyper dogs, energetic dogs and high drive dogs tend to enjoy sporty things that make them move. These games tend to heat the dogs up, and they are often used for that before competitions of certain sorts, and with hyper dogs what you need to achieve is quite the opposite.

Smelling and sniffing is proven to calm the dogs down, so anything that encourages them to sniff around helps them to calm down. Smell is the strongest sense dogs have and they can find out more from one sniff we could ever analyze with a hundred. There is no need to think offering the dog some slow sniffing tasks would be boring or would make you a bad owner. The dog is experiencing a ton of things, and many of those can be bright new because it never had the time to really think about what it just smelled.

Ball crazy dogs love to chase the ball, but chasing the ball hypes the dog up. Instead of throwing the ball for the dog to chase, throw it for the dog to catch. This requires more concentrating, and many dogs end up liking the game as much as they love chasing the ball. It’s just a little less stressful.

Teaching tricks has become more popular these days than iit was a few years earlier. I remember back in the start of the 21st century trick training was suffering from bad reputation. Some people spread the belief training tricks for your dog makes it perform worse in other areas. Some people took trick training as something only inexperienced, skill-less trainers did, because they could not do anything “more difficult and useful”. Luckily, those days of false advertisement are over and more and more dogs enjoy the joy of learning small tricks to please their masters. This is nothing but positive; concentrating and focusing is good mental stimulation for the dog, but it is also something highly useful for hyper dogs. Learning to listen and try builds up patience they lack.

Last but definitely not least, good ol’fashioned walks have their time and place. A peaceful walk around the block, or a longer walk to experience all the smells and messages left by other dogs, other animals and people may at their very best help to lower stress levels. This however means the dog should not see anything too exciting or scary during the walk. If the dog is very reactive and alert, choose a secluded place where you can really enjoy peace and quiet.

Fabulous, but we do need to leave the house sometimes. What about then?

Unfortunately hyper dogs are very good at building up some steam by themselves. When the owners leave, hyper dogs may start running from window to window, breaking and stealing stuff, barking, howling, entertaining themselves in any way they can before their owners return. Actually, before diagnosing your dog has separation anxiety, be sure it is not just bored. That is a thing - and sometimes a lot harder to fix than separation anxiety since you can’t really teach the dog NOT to get bored. Sometimes leaving in toys and bones help, and yet sometimes those same toys and bones may act as an excitement, working against us.

In the case of the boxer I mentioned earlier, I asked the owners to delimit a small, calm space for the dog. They happened to have a nice basement, one of those living room/movie studio things, where the dog liked to hang out with people. They bought a dog gate and restricted the dogs access to any other part of the house. They left water, some nice bed and a toy, and they made sure the dog could look out of the window opening up towards the calmer side of the house.

After the first week the owner reported me they had found the dog sleeping. Never before had it calmed down during their absence, but now it was sleeping peacefully. From that day forward the dog knew to go to the basement and lay down whenever they prepared to leave for work, and it acted calm and happy when they returned.

Marking a small nice area for your hyper dog often helps it to calm down. When there is nothing much to do, eventually the dog (should it be the stress levels are actively lowered with some of the above ways) will lay down and sleep. Many owners report once their dog starts sleeping, it will sleep abnormally much for the first weeks. This is because it has been over the edge for a long time. It is tired, it needs rest, but it has been unable to answer to that need because of being so stressed and hyped.

Chill

The boxer owner very happily informed me that things are going well these days. The dog has remembered some of the old sign commands now that it can focus in things again, and it seems to be a lot happier. It is still active and it likes to exercise, walk, sniff and experience, but when they are home, it knows how to calm down. In other words, it isn’t stressed anymore.

Living with a dog should not feel unbearable. Depending on what kind of dogs you own and how many you have, there will be less or more work load, but in general enjoying owning dogs is kind of why we tend to own them. If every day is a struggle, stop and think the situation for a moment. If it happens to be you find yourself in a situation where you own a hyper dog, there ARE ways to help both the dog and you. Active dogs can be a blast, but there is a time and place for some rest, too, both for the dog and for you.

Make sure to sit back and calm down with your canine friend, sometimes. We don’t always have to double gallop through the days.