Physical Contact and Rub-downs

A primary way Brenda recommends to make the switch between hind brain and front brain is with physical contact. Now, I'm not talking about hitting or kicking, so don't get the wrong idea. She does a lot of rubbing along the body, and on the head. The rubbing is not the same as petting. The hand is flat, so you're not forming it to the dog's body, and you rub back and forth (not just in the direction of the hair). It's firm back and forth, with a fair amount of pressure. You rub all over the dogs back, down it's legs, and even on it's cheeks, from lips to ear. The cheek rubbing is easiest done with the thumbs.

The back away and emergency hold that I mentioned in the Leash Aggression post are good ways to flip the brain to front mode. But, as always, there's pre-work to be done before you can use any of these methods in a stressful situation. Many dogs are uncomfortable with touching, especially around the head and neck. We first need to desensitize the dog to the touching/rubbing by giving the dog a good rub-down several times a day. Rub their bodies and faces, while saying "good boy/girl" in a calm soothing voice. I think a video would be a great way to show this method, so as soon as I can, I'll post a video up here.

Practice the backaway during your walks. Practice the emergency hold, even when you're not in an emergency, because you want the dog to be accustomed to you reaching for his collar and touching his face in advance. We don't want the dogs taking their frustration out on us! Practice giving your dog a good rub-down.

If you see that your dog is about to flip into hind brain mode, you can prevent the transition by quickly doing a backaway, placing the dog in an emergency hold, and rubbing her face and body. In this scenario, you have prevented rehearsal, which you may remember me referring to in earlier posts. See, everything is related! When we prevent rehearsal, we begin to build new and different neural pathways, preferably to the correct behavior.

Practicing these maneuvers in advance can help us bring the dog out of hind brain mode as well, making them useful in so many different situations. It's so important for our dogs to be accustomed to being touched by us. Each dog has a different tolerance for being touched, so you'll have to start at a level that is appropriate for your dog. Some are highly sensitive even to the pressure of a collar. Others are very amiable to all sorts of physical contact. Once you start working on physical contact, and the dog realizes it's not threatening, using rubbing to manipulate the hind brain is quite successful because dogs respond to pressure. Similar to swaddling a baby, dogs feel safer when wrapped tightly: when they feel pressure on their bodies. The rubbing creates that pressure, and actually calms the dog down. Brenda Aloff believes that this releases dopamine and serotonin, calming chemicals, in the brain.

Use the rub-downs in just about any situation when your dog is anxious. Firm rubbing and a calm soothing voice. Look for calming signals from her as a sign that she's responding to the rubbing. Peyton most commonly shakes his body (Brenda refers to this as shaking the tension out) and licks/chews. You may see blinking, tension visibly leaving the face, etc (see the post that describes calming signals).