Lions, tigers and bears, if you saw some of those, might you be stressed? How would you act if you were stressed? That is also something we talked about in therapy dog class today. Our instructors spent a lot of time talking about stress, why dogs might stress, what they do when they stress and made sure our moms and dads know that a stressed dog is a unhappy dog.
In the therapy dog world, even though we want to help people, the most important things to remember is US! Your dog. Our handlers, you, must watch us very carefully for signs of stress because we cannot talk to tell you "hey, get me outta here!"
Signs of stress, there are lots of them and every dog is different just like people. Me, I do a lot of avoidance, sniffing, head down, head away, forget how to do things, just CANNOT do the things I know even though we all know I know how to do them! Like Sit, I might forget how because my mind is somewhere else.
Another stress sign of mine, moving away, and ears down, panting and yawning.
Really Really important to pay attention to this stuff Mom! No pictures of this please, it isn't a pretty sight!
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